


Room for Dreams

by Fluffifullness



Category: Durarara!!
Genre: Blindness, Deaf, Durarara!! Kink Meme, Gang Rape, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Muteness, Rape Aftermath, Suicidal Thoughts, Whump, hurt!Izaya, trigger warning
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-05-26
Updated: 2015-08-07
Packaged: 2017-12-13 01:32:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 31
Words: 42,172
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/818384
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fluffifullness/pseuds/Fluffifullness
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He's raped, beaten, blinded and thrown away and he can't even say a word about it. He can't hear his friends calling him, can't help fearing the hands that reach out to catch him. He'd like to die, he really would, but they won't even let him do that much on his own.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the [kink meme](http://drrrkink.livejournal.com/6253.html?thread=23934573#t23934573). Please be aware that much of the content of this story will center on the aftermath of very brutal rape and violence.
> 
> ~~There seem to be a lot of fics out there involving hurt!Izaya, but - just okay. Here's another!~~

He’s at the top of his game at first.

He jokes with them as if they were close friends, and they laugh right along with him. It’s all very cordial, the sting of a blade tracing the lines of his muscles and the greasy fingers fisting in his dark hair. The rope they use to bind his hands behind his back while they beat him. They do it tight, so it hurts and Izaya knows it’ll leave burn marks that will be visible for weeks to come.

He’s busy wondering how he’ll explain that to his clients, Namie and Shinra and maybe even Shizuo – he might even show up _now,_ wouldn’t that be funny – when the hands in his hair fall to his belt and the top button of his pants.

“Are you all that desperate for attention?” Izaya teases. His smirk never fades as his clothes are jerked down to his ankles. “Why not just fuck _each other?_ There’re certainly enough of you.”

“Shut up,” one of them snarls. “Or would you like to lose some more blood, Orihara-kun?”

“No, thanks,” Izaya chirps, grin widening as he’s stripped completely bare and lowered to his hands and knees – rope removed, the muscles of his arms and wrists and ankles neatly cut here and there so that he can’t seem to move them quite right.

They won’t do it. Of course, because they’re only human and he’s something a little more. He knows how they work, which means that there’s no way, no way…

It hurts.

He asks them politely to stop, because his entire body hurts and they’ve just made it hundreds of times worse. He’s staring at dirt and dusty rocks littered with broken glass and he’s experiencing an entirely new kind of pain.

“Pretty tight,” grunts the one whose hands are digging into his hips. “Could be a virgin.”

That sets most of them off laughing like there’s never been a funnier joke. It’s not funny, though, Izaya thinks, his eyes widening as the gleam of his own switchblade appears in the periphery of his vision. It’s not funny because it’s true and he hurts everywhere, he feels more violated than he’s ever thought possible.

He can’t help it. He lets out a soft whimper as the hands on his hips move back up to tug at his hair. “Like a horse,” someone laughs.

“Anyone got the pick?”

“Sure,” someone answers lazily. They’re closer than the others, perhaps sitting right beside Izaya – yes, there, the barest glimpse of blue denim – and a rough hand slips under Izaya’s chin to turn his face away. “Should I go ahead now?”

The one whose cock is buried in Izaya grunts again and thrusts bruisingly deep; liquid, unmistakably hot and thick, fills the space left by his pulling out, leaks past the informant’s entrance and drips amply down to the ground below.

Izaya feels like throwing up.

“Yeah,” he hears. “Might as well get that done now.”

“Just gotta break his eardrum, ‘kay? Wait for the bastard to cringe or somethin’.”

No. No no no.

“What do you –?”

“Nothing, Orihara-kun. We want nothing.”

“Leave me alone,” he pleads.

Someone laughs, and there’s the eerily close sensation of a long piece of metal grazing the curve of his ear as it slips inside.

No, no no no no. “No…!”

It’s the loudest sound he’s ever heard. It feels like the metal – an ice pick, the bastards are using a fucking _kitchen utensil_ – has gone straight through his ear to bury itself in his brain. He feels his mouth open wide and feels his strangled cry more than he actually hears it. It’s a breathlessness, the heavy weight of air leaving his lungs and throat. It’s worse than the sharp edge of his knife dragged teasingly, now, from the blade of his shoulder to the jut of his pelvis.

“Get the other one,” someone shouts gleefully, and Izaya has no time to think as the agony extends to his other ear, the extra invasiveness of the instrument eliciting that damned explosion of white light and silent screams.

They drag him up so that he’s staring at the lines of stained-green mortar between chipped bricks and weeds climbing the wall. He can’t see the ground anymore, though he probably could if he were only able to look down. He moves his lips and exhales but hears nothing, just a deafening ringing, the incredible hurt and his nerves learning new tricks of sensation.

He would have preferred ignorance.

The knife returns to rest at the corner of his eye. He freezes, feeling just barely the heat of blood welling up from the soft skin there.

Don’t do it. Please don’t do it, don’t –

He doesn’t hear them laughing, encouraging the woman with the knife – his knife, _his_ – in her hand, but he sees her lips moving and knows it’s meant for him.

_Having fun?_

The last thing his right eye sees is that, the upward curve of her lips at one corner, the shine of red gloss and long, dark hair. The entire length of his favorite knife poised to strike – and strike it does.

He’s been crying for a while, he realizes. His cheeks are wet and stinging and now there’s blood and the sick plop of his – his –

No. God no no please wake up I have to wake up I have to get away it hurts it hurts it hurts I’m sorry why make it stop stop stop _please_ –

He screams.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _She knows that Izaya may never see it as such._

Celty almost doesn’t stop. She must have imagined the scream, she thinks. It’s none of her business, and it’s late. Shinra’s waiting, home early and eager to see her.

Her horse whinnies, long shadows visible even in the unlit dark of back streets, and they’re moving fast. It’s probably nothing, but if it’s something, someone hurt and scared and needing help – she might be the only one around to offer that. She would prefer not to learn about it later, a front-page newspaper article or a sensationalized TV report.

She’s getting closer. Any farther and she’ll pass it by, just like that. The end, because if she moves on she won’t be able to find a good enough reason to go back.

She hears it again, longer and louder and unnervingly familiar.

And she decides to take the long way home to their shared apartment – the one with the detour, the one that’s yelling mindlessly for help, for stop and it hurts.

Someone is in pain.

She thinks she knows who it is.

**~**

He’s dying.

She can tell right away. There’s blood everywhere, long lines of it welling up from gashes in his arms, his chest and back and – his throat, that part of him is bleeding so much already that there may be no point in even trying. He sounds like he’s drowning, short bursts of air reaching his lungs through a growing pool of moon-bright red. He doesn’t seem to realize that she’s there until she reaches out to grab him.

And that’s when he opens his eyes.

She almost drops him, but that somehow translates to her hands tightening about his arms – because he shudders, mouth opening and closing and no sound, weak struggling and tears she’s surprised he can even shed.

His coat is lying at the edge of a growing pool of blood. She reaches for it, almost missing, and wraps it awkwardly around him before positioning him in front of her on the motorcycle.

He never stops shaking.

**~**

Shinra helps her carry Izaya into a little side room. He’s barely breathing, pale and dead-looking and his ears are bleeding, now, too. She watches Shinra call to the informant as his hands find disinfectant and bandages, needles and thread and gauze. He hastily cleans and binds wound after wound while Celty lets her shadows stand in place of a tourniquet.

“You’ll be fine, okay, Izaya-kun, we’ll find out who did this to you and you’ll make it out alive,” and he keeps talking and talking and they both know that Izaya probably can’t hear it anyway. He’s slipping away, and there’s nothing left anymore – nothing to keep him in touch with everything around him, no words or faces that could possibly reach him where he is and where he’s going.

Celty doesn’t know much about medicine, but she does her best for both of them. She doesn’t know what Izaya’s odds are or what he’s feeling now, but she knows that he probably isn’t fighting anymore.

She understands that everyone has a breaking point.

There’s nothing left for them to do, eventually. Shinra’s pale, too, shaking and sweating and it’s funny because Celty knows that he and Orihara Izaya aren’t that close. Not close enough to panic when something goes this wrong, not close enough to try this hard while fearing all the while that it might not be enough.

It’s just that something _has_ gone this wrong. It could have been anyone, anyone whose face they’d known for a long time. Anyone would be beyond shocked by something like this. Cruelty in excess of anything Izaya’s – anyone, _anyone’s_ – ever done.

It just happened to be Izaya, and Shinra. And Celty.

There’s nothing left for them to do, and Izaya is still breathing.

Celty doesn’t know much – not the reason for this, the medicine of dismemberment and survival or what, exactly, it’s like to be human – but she knows that it’s a miracle – the thready beeping of the monitor, the air forced in and out of lungs by a thin tube while more feed painkillers and blood into thirsty veins.

She knows that Izaya may never see it as such.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _He’d like to hope that it’s death come to take him away, but he knows better than that._

The wind on his face scares Izaya almost as much as does the return of hands to the throbbing stinging burning pain that is his skin. The touch is cold, lightless and not a sound. He can feel air pulsing past his ears – throbbing, useless meat and he’d cut them the hell off if he only had his knife back – and the shape of a motorcycle beneath him. There’s no vibration, though, and no whisper of cloth or friction.

He’d like to hope that it’s death come to take him away, but he knows better than that. He knows what Ikebukuro’s resident dullahan is like, visible or not, and if it’s not her it’s someone else with anything but good intentions.

The last thing he feels is that wind on his face, the slow pulse of blood leaving his throat and his half-clothed body and a perfect onslaught of pain.

**~**

Waking up is the same, but it brings with it, too, the agony of uncertainty.

His throat hurts inside and out, and in an instant he finds himself panicking. It’s been slit, after all, and he’s bleeding, he’s sure he is – but there’s the tight rub of bandages there when he reaches up to claw at it, and instead he’s choking on something that isn’t blood, something solid and –

– removable, he thinks, so he drags his scraped-up hands off of rough sheets and feels them close on cool plastic.

Someone catches his wrists before he can tug at the obstruction – and it’s that cold grip again, strong and firm. He imagines that it belongs to Celty, but then he doesn’t know that with any amount of certainty because he can’t see or hear a damn thing. He _should_ be at Shinra’s, but for all he knows he’s being kept alive somewhere else entirely, a toy for hurting and fucking and whatever the hell else they might feel like doing to him.

His hands are eased back down to rest at his sides and he feels himself shudder from head to toe as the panic deepens.

He can’t see. He can’t _hear._

He can’t breathe, either, and in the next moment he feels another set of hands brush his face as the tube – he thinks it’s a tube, probably connected to some big machine and that’s what’s been forcing the rise and fall of his chest – is finally removed. He’s left gasping and shuddering, held down still by what can only be Celty’s shadows. They don’t feel like human hands, after all, and they’re not even slightly warm.

As soon as he can, he parts his lips again and tries to remember what it _feels_ like to speak – but the slightly sweaty palm of a warm hand is immediately pressed to his mouth. One of his own hands is freed and lifted gently up to feel a single digit shaking before another’s shut mouth.

_Don’t talk._

Or… is it that he can’t do _that,_ either?

He shudders again, feels hot tears welling up at the corners of his eyes and realizes only then that they’re bound in bandages, claustrophobically close and disgustingly soft.

He knows what he must look like beneath that gauze. One of his eyes – one of them, and that’s all – and the other one definitely damaged beyond repair, too –

A hand falls on his shoulder, still and strong and hurting where his skin is lined with fresh scars and more bandages. The other lifts the hand it’s holding to let Izaya’s fingers graze the delicate edge of a pair of glasses, to feel the jut of a nose and smooth cheeks and soft hair.

Shinra.

Shinra, but why? He’s a friend but he’s still only a human to Izaya – not anyone particularly close _because no one is_ and Izaya doesn’t doubt that his death would affect the doctor very little.

That’s it. He can’t ask, anyway, and Shinra can’t communicate anything to him. They’ve reached a stalemate already. Izaya would ask to die if he had a voice to do it with, but he hurts everywhere and he has only three senses left to him with nothing at all to compensate for the loss. His ears hurt, the phantom pain of long metal and iron blood still ringing faintly there. His eyes – _eye_ – his limbs and back and chest where they were sliced open by the knife. His back, his ass – the ripped-wide-splayed-and-used torture of being violated by a stranger, things he’d never done before and never ever wants to do again.

The tears have somehow managed to slip on down to his cheeks. He can feel them stinging there, and the painful throb of a lump in his throat behind the cut-deep ache of just another wound.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _He never truly imagined, did he, that the dark edge of humanity could cut him, too?_

That first encounter with a conscious Izaya is about as peaceful as it gets. He cries and fights and doubts and hurts, sure, and it’s all there for them to see. Still, he’s at least a little bit rational – just that first time, just before it’s all really sunk in.

Just before he has the chance to realize that this is it. This is him, now.

Disabled.

It’s a funny word in that it only sounds right from a distance.

Shinra knows that he’s being an idiot. He doesn’t tell anyone how bad it is – because he can’t tell Izaya, anyway, and it’s _his_ business before it’s anyone else’s – not even Celty, not even when she worries and rubs little reassuring circles in the white of Shinra’s lab coat. It’s adorable and he loves her for it but he can’t – he feels empty at the best of times, like maybe the world’s never going to be as bright as it used to be.

And to think that Orihara Izaya’s downfall somehow manages to be the thing to steal that away.

Their first meeting after the torture and the rape and the rescue is just about as peaceful as it gets. It grants just about as much hope as Shinra thinks they’ll ever have.

The next time is different.

The informant comes down with a fever mere hours after slipping back into unconsciousness, and Shinra won’t say it but he and Celty both know that it plays tricks on Izaya. Twists him, scares him. Forces him to remember.

Izaya wakes up open-mouthed and a long choked-up sigh – a scream the only way he can manage it any more – with his hands fisting in the blankets and panic.

_Panic._

That – the clawing, crying panic – is momentary the first time. He stops thrashing, then, calms down enough to let Shinra guide his hands and change his bandages. He breathes. He thinks things through and cries and goes quiet. He’s dark and scared and empty, but the panic isn’t there to well and truly put him back in danger.

Every time from then on, though, it only worsens with every moment he spends awake. There are no more calm moments, no time for being helped or healed. Only thrashing, convulsive sobbing and broken muscles struggling in some long-lost fight for freedom. He’s better off asleep, maybe, but then his dreams can’t be doing him much good, either, and they can’t drug him all the time anyway.

Celty asks why. She’s tired, too, after all, and by then it’s only been a handful of days.

“They’d stop working, for one,” Shinra sighs. “Or he’d never wake up at all.”

_Maybe he wants that._

Shinra has to fight back the urge to yell. “I – I know,” he stammers, exhausted. “I know, but we can’t do that to him now.”

It’s a bad joke, of course, but Shinra continues to cling to the faint hope that Izaya will somehow find something to hold on to.

And that when that happens – _if_ that happens – it will be for dear life.

  **~**  


Sometimes it’s like Izaya’s pleading with someone, but there are too many things he might ask for now. Shinra knows that he wants to be alone, of course. It’s in the way he struggles, the flinching away from every touch and painful sobs as he fades in and out of nightmare-laden sleep.

He knows without needing any real indications that Izaya wants to go back to being who he was. He’s scared of being scared, scared of staying the way he is forever. Scared that he won’t make it like this.

Scared that he will.

He never truly imagined, did he, that the dark edge of humanity could cut him, too?

It’s been a while since either of them has accepted any jobs. Celty’s been getting fewer offers, anyway – of course, because it’s always been Izaya who supplied her with most of them.

And that’s fine, really, but it can’t go on that way for long. Giving Izaya the care he needs right now is fairly expensive on its own, and they have more expenses to cover aside from that. Shinra offers to take on a few patients – because, he explains, the yakuza are already frustrated enough as it is – but Celty refuses to go along with that.

 _You have to be here for him,_ she insists. She’s been watching Shinra take care of Izaya, sure, but she still doesn’t have the medical know-how to administer the same treatments with any amount of confidence.

“You’d do fine,” he placates.

_You’re worried._

Not that Celty isn’t, too, but she has every point and Shinra has few. That’s why he gives in, waits for someone to call and then gives Celty the directions.

She hesitates by the door, black suit reflecting none of the glaring indoor lights. It’s raining, and a heavy dose of painkillers has Izaya blissfully unconscious for the time being.

“Good luck.”

She inclines her helmet in something of a nod, then takes out her PDA.

_I might be a while._

Shinra nods. “I know. I’ll be fine. He shouldn’t wake up before then.”

_If he does – no, in case he does._

“Hm?”

_Call Shizuo._


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Better than words and explanations are see-it-for-yourself experience, personal reality and everything Shinra can’t possibly verbalize for his friend._

It seems like the perfect way to get Izaya killed – on the surface, maybe, but they know Shizuo. He’s old-fashioned in his own way, and when it comes to beating people when they’re down – even fleas, even Orihara Izaya – he’s beyond reluctant. Doesn’t want to think of himself as a bully, probably, and if Shinra can feel the way he does about seeing Izaya like this, then there just might be hope for Shizuo.

Speed dial number five, several rings and then Shizuo’s gruff voice on the other end. He sounds tired, Shinra thinks, like he hasn’t slept in a few days.

“Shizuo-kun,” he begins, and he can practically hear Shizuo’s guard coming up on the other end of the line.

“Shinra,” he sighs. “Whatever this is, can’t it wait –”

“Sorry, no. I need you to get over here as soon as you can.”

“Yeah? What for?”

“There’s… a difficult patient,” Shinra sighs. “I’m going to need your help with him. He could easily hurt himself if he’s not properly held down, and you’re strong enough to take care of that without even breaking a sweat.”

Shizuo pauses to stifle a yawn – plainly unimpressed, as ever, by compliments concerning his more physical attributes. “Mph… can’t Celty…?”

“She’s not available at the moment.”

Another long pause.

Then – “Fine, I guess...”

“Thanks –”

“You owe me, Shinra.”

Shinra smiles, nods where Shizuo can’t see it. He’d like to add that he’ll owe Shizuo a lot more when this is all done, but that would put his friend off. It would require a painfully awkward explanation, too, and explanations aren’t something Shinra can offer until the very last moment.

**~**

Shizuo is as impatient as ever when he shows up at Shinra’s door. He’s a straightforward guy, after all, and stubborn to boot; he tries to barrel straight past Shinra even as the doctor struggles to block his path with gesturing arms and a pacifying expression. He wants to get it over with already, he explains, because he has today off of work and doesn’t feel like wasting a lot of free time here.

“Not yet, Shizuo-kun – he’s still sleeping –!”

“Ah? Why’d you call if you didn’t need help _now?”_ Shizuo wonders irritably, but nevertheless he gradually stops trying to dodge Shinra.

“Well,” the doctor says with a sheepish smile as he lowers his arms and sighs, “it was supposed to be just in case” – Shizuo’s slight frown deepens instantly into a glare – “but – well, there’ll probably be more occasions later on –”

“Shinra,” Shizuo sighs, “just how long is this guy supposed to be here?”

“Million dollar question, huh,” Shinra mutters.

“What?”

“Look, Shizuo-kun…”

While Shinra pauses to think of a good way to answer his friend – to prepare him, to say something that doesn’t skirt the issue quite so much as his other explanations have – Shizuo interrupts with another question, one that hits a little closer to home.

“What the hell kinda patient is this, anyway?”

Shinra grows somber, sighs again and takes Shizuo’s wrist in his hand.

“Promise to stay calm,” he demands, and Shizuo nods curiously as he’s led past the living room and toward the small space inhabited by bones and blood and dripping chemicals.

Shizuo’s a straightforward person, after all, and so better than words and explanations are see-it-for-yourself experience, personal reality and everything Shinra can’t possibly verbalize for his friend.

**~**

Shizuo says nothing. He says nothing and nothing and Shinra eventually begins to wonder if he’s even recognized the figure on the bed – bright overhead lights washing white what little of Izaya’s body remains uncovered by bandages and the slow up-down of his chest as he breathes. The slow drip of an IV, the steady beep of a heart monitor.

The bandages conspicuously hiding his neck and eyes.

Clichéd, maybe, but it’s true that this isn’t the Orihara Izaya known to Heiwajima Shizuo, after all, and if Shinra weren’t so familiar with the sight already, he’d maybe wonder who it was, too.

“Sorry,” Shizuo breathes after a long moment. “I don’t… exactly know what to say.”

Shinra only nods.

“Who did it?” he wonders. One of his hands is resting trembling tensing repetitively and then relaxing on the back of his neck. The other wanders down to rest just above the obvious bulge of a pack of cigarettes. He doesn’t draw it out of his pocket.

“We don’t know,” Shinra responds at barely above a whisper. “He can’t tell us.”

“Y – y’mean…?” Shizuo’s eyes search Izaya’s still form once, twice. He looks again at the monitor, the metal stand with its bags of chemicals and Izaya’s barely-parted lips.

“Oh,” Shinra realizes with a quick smile. “No, he’s – not comatose.”

Shizuo swallows hard, shuffles and looks absolutely like he has no idea what he’s doing.

“So he can’t see.”

It’s not a question.

“They probably used his knife,” Shinra says. It’s answer enough to compound the effect several times over – visible horror manifesting in a slow shudder, eyes closing briefly only to open determinedly.

Shizuo swallows again, moves his hand from his neck to press the back to his lips. “Okay,” he breathes, “Okay, so – Shinra, can you tell me everything? Everything you know – please.”

Shinra’s not sure if there’s any point in asking why. Shizuo’s here to help. He’s here because Izaya’s here, and maybe he doesn’t have a right to know beyond that but he’s explicitly asking Shinra to relieve himself of the little extra burden he’s been carrying alone.

Shizuo’s strong, anyway.

“His ears,” Shinra begins, “were punctured with a long tool of some sort. It damaged both tympanic membranes as well as the ossicles behind that. I’ve tried testing his hearing in both ears a few times, but he’s entirely unresponsive. There’s still a chance that hearing aids might help him for a little while, at least, but it’s not – you know, looking good at the moment.”

“I see,” Shizuo mumbles, and Shinra’s sure that he doesn’t – not entirely, not the anatomy or the difference between sensorineural and conduction hearing loss – but the point’s kind of hard to miss.

“Severe lacerations cover approximately sixty percent of his body, and his throat –”

Shinra hesitates. Shizuo tugs at the bangs that dangle across his forehead, lets them fall, and then nods.

“Keep going,” he prompts quietly.

“He’s having a hard time producing sound, Shizuo-kun. Again, we can hope that he’ll heal somewhat, but chances are slim that he’ll ever speak again, either.”

“Oh,” Shizuo realizes. “Oh – that’s –”

Why he can’t communicate…

“Should I stop? It’s a lot to ask, I know, and I’m sorry –”

“No,” he grunts. “I want to know. I’ll help if I can, so – go on.”

He looks like he wants to ask how much worse it actually gets, though.

Shinra turns away from both of them, wishes he could cover his ears or pretend. “Several of his ribs are badly fractured, and I’m worried about internal bleeding if he keeps panicking the way he has been when he wakes up.”

“Izaya… panics,” Shizuo muses. “‘S the flea scared – or mad, maybe?”

“Paranoid is more like it,” Shinra murmurs. “He only has three senses left, after all, and two aren’t exactly useful to him right now.”

Shizuo breathes deep and quiet – intentionally slow to calm himself down, probably – and then slips his fingers into that pocketful of cigarettes - still without pulling any out, of course.

“Is that everything?”

“No,” Shinra admits. Pauses, turns back to Shizuo and then moves closer to Izaya. “I don’t think even Celty knows, Shizuo-kun, and I’m not sure that Izaya-kun would want me telling anyone.”

“As if this bastard’d want me to hear any of this, anyway,” Shizuo mutters. It sounds sort of like a joke, but it’s too true to be particularly humorous. Every tidbit of information is, after all, rightfully Izaya’s. It’s not something he’d ever willingly hand over to Heiwajima Shizuo, and Shizuo wouldn’t normally be so eager to obtain it.

And yet Orihara Izaya is asleep for now. He’s breathing slow and having nightmares, and when he wakes up he’ll be much too far gone to worry even slightly about what those around him do and don’t know. Recognizing the new touch as belonging to Shizuo might scare him, might comfort him, might mean nothing at all, but the being seen probably won’t matter much.

Probably.

“He was raped.”

Goddammit, it doesn’t matter how he says it but it’s too blunt and too few words for everything it means.

Shizuo pales. “A-ah…”

“At least once before having his throat slit,” Shinra whispers, tears threatening because Izaya didn’t deserve it, doesn’t deserve it, wasn’t so naïve that he didn’t know but it was his first and probably last time and it had to have hurt. “And then – and then they cut him, Shizuo-kun, and kept at it until they were sure he wouldn’t make it.”

“That’s when they left, huh,” Shizuo fills in the blank for Shinra.

“Probably.”

And then Celty found him, brought him here and they did Everything They Could.

Shizuo sounds sick, like he’s choking or nauseous or just plain beyond words. “Does he know where he is, then?”

“He should,” Shinra grants, “but a few of the deeper wounds got infected the other day. He’s still getting over the fever, and I sort of wonder if he’s forgotten.”

“D’you think that me being here could help him?” Shizuo wonders, and when Shinra’s gaze turns inquisitive he flushes and turns back to Izaya. “It’s not that – not that I don’t want him dead or something, I guess, but – not like this, Shinra. He’s never done anything this bad to anyone.”

And he’s already promised, after all, and maybe the flea’ll get better – better enough – and it’d be sorta funny if he wound up owing Shizuo a favor or two.

So he’ll stay – overnight, even, ‘cause he hasn’t taken a lot of days off anyway and he’s sure that Tom wouldn’t mind just this once.

He says it directly to Izaya, smiles faintly and moves to stand over his bed.

Presses the palm of his hand to Izaya’s forehead –

– and pulls it back as Izaya suddenly turns his head to the side, parts his lips wide and breathless and shudders from head to toe.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _He wonders how that paradox works, of course – how he can yearn to die and still fear threats to his life._

Izaya used to be unable to fall asleep at night – or any time, really, because everything’s night to him these days. He can, now, but that’s only when he imagines pleasant things – a long, thin needle under his skin, a little pinch and then a rush of nothing. Closed eyes and death with a quiet smile.

Sometimes he tries to elaborate on what comes after – all sorts of things, but the single thread of commonality there is that he can always see. He has long conversations with some people he knows, some he doesn’t, and there’s always something amusing to be heard. Birds, cars, food frying on hot stoves. Humans, sometimes, and the city, but that far less often.

Somehow, it’s like they’ve lost some of their appeal.

None of that’s really the point, though. The point is the dying itself. He tries so hard to feel it as if it were real, to find in death the joy he’s always found in life.

Waking up is terrifying. Most of the time, he’s not even sure he has – just another nightmare, he thinks, just more silent darkness. He can’t quite remember what it feels like to be calm, but things like regret and misery always linger not far behind the intense screen of fear. He cries, tries to scream and fights every touch because he can’t be sure that it’s not someone there to hurt him.

He wonders how that paradox works, of course – how he can yearn to die and still fear threats to his life.

Like the large hand covering his forehead above the swathe of bandages, hot and heavy as he comes dazedly to. He imagines it strong, pain-giving, and the panic is instantaneous. He moves as much as he can, panics more as the pain in his body worsens bit by bit and the hands close on his wrists.

He forces his chest up, head back, tears involuntarily stinging his cheeks as a second pair of hands struggles to ease him back onto the bed.

He doesn’t give up, keeps thrashing and crying until his body gives up _for_ him, sinks breathless and sweat-damp into the sheets and lies there trembling uselessly.

He hates this, hates this so much. Hates that the smaller pair of hands disappears, hates that the larger ones don’t. They leave his wrists gradually, of course, move up his arms and ease him out of the way of the other hands as his clothing – a gown, maybe, something soft and thin and legless – is tugged up to expose his entire body.

They pull at his skin, unwrap the tight press of his bandages and leave him shaking and naked.

 _Don’t look don’t look don’t look_ – he wants to beg them to leave him alone, to please don’t touch him, to not look at him because he can feel the weight of a hundred thousand people’s gazes on this filthy thing that is his own body. It's shame, pure and undiluted, and he's scared of the nearness.

Someone puts a hand on his shoulder. He shivers, but the hand doesn’t disappear.

He pretends he doesn’t exist, pretends he’s floating somewhere else, pretends light. It hurts too much still for him to sleep, but he manages to keep himself purely catatonic until the hands finish with him.

His chest feels heavy again, but at least he’s lying under a few layers of cloth.

The hand on his shoulder is still there. It shifts down to lift Izaya’s wrist up off of the mattress, and he flinches back but can’t even begin to free himself. He’s scared of the touch, can’t stop thinking about the old ones because they’re still there in everything he feels now. He feels himself panicking, but the fear slows to stunned shock the moment his fingers grasp the neck and collar of the hand’s owner.

There’s a pulse there, but more important than that is the power being handed to him – like he’s being told that he’s safe here, free to hurt this stranger despite the weakness in his own limbs.

His thumb grazes an extra bulge of fabric, and as he tries to explore that on his own he’s freely let to go ahead.

It’s a bowtie.

His lips move.

_Sh-Shizu-chan?_


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _It’s not fair. He hates Izaya,_ hates him, _and the last thing he wants is to be stuck worrying about him forever._

Shizuo decides to stay with Shinra and Izaya for one reason and one reason only.

It’s not so much that he feels sorry for the flea, although of course there’s more than a hint of sympathy tugging at Shizuo whenever he looks back at that still form. It’s not because even Izaya deserves better – he does, though – and it’s not because Shizuo’s so shaken that he can’t think straight.

It’s because he feels responsible, because he’s spent years and years hating the flea, threatening him and wishing that any number of terrible things would happen to him. He can’t help superstitiously feeling that the wanting made it happen, that he somehow shares the weight of the crime and Izaya’s pain.

So this is his job, sort of. His problem.

Lucky Izaya, huh. Stuck with Shizuo, of all people. He’s not for healing and he’s not exactly a friend, but he’s all Izaya’s got next to Shinra and sometimes Celty.

He needs so much more.

“Sorry,” Shizuo murmurs, and as far as Shinra’s concerned he’s only apologizing for being as awkward as he is.

The sight of Izaya lying broken on a hospital bed is bad enough to begin with, but even then Shizuo’s surprised by how stressful the laundry list of damage actually is. The poor bastard’s got no way out. The scars aren’t likely to heal, his eyes and ears are pretty much shot – yeah, Shizuo understands. He never would’ve been able to imagine Izaya like this – nervous, paranoid and scared and weak – but the last little detail certainly tops the sundae.

He’ll kill those bastards with his own two hands if they’re ever unfortunate enough to be found by him.

And, hey, he’s good at things like that, after all – violence, fighting and maybe petty things like revenge. It’s only when it comes to Izaya panicking, then, that Shizuo has no clue what to do with himself. His only recourse is to blindly follow Shinra’s instructions and force himself to look away as the flea’s stripped bare, trembling and too weak to fight.

There’s nothing in him but _fear,_ dammit, and the lump in Shizuo’s own throat when he looks back at Izaya afterward.

He’s barely moving, but it’s beyond obvious that he’s staying still mostly because he’s just that terrified. Completely out of his wits, sheet-white and the heart monitor is hammering away so that it sounds like he’s having a heart attack or something.

Waiting hopelessly for the storm to pass.

Actually, that might be when the other reasons start to matter. Izaya himself. The pain he’s in, the pain Shizuo’s in when he sees that. The way it is, looking down at someone broken as badly as Izaya.

Responsibility plus something more.

He apologizes again, nods pointedly at Shinra so that the doctor files past both of them and closes the door softly behind him.

“See if you can get through to him,” he suggests, and it’s funny because it’s looking pretty damn hopeless.

The room quiets fast without Shinra’s loud-mouthed instructions and murmured encouragement. There’s the quick rhythm of the heart monitor and Izaya’s shallow breathing, but nothing else. Shizuo truly doesn’t know what to say, and it’s not like it really matters but it feels wrong, anyway. Tense. Awkward.

“You’ll” – he swallows, moves his hand down to rest hesitantly on Izaya’s – “be – fine, y’know. You’re done for now.”

Izaya exhales softly – a little whimper, maybe? – and Shizuo thinks about retrieving his hand to his side again.

He doesn’t, though, only because – because it’s frustrating, really, because if Izaya stays like this every time he’s touched then there’ll never be any getting better, anyway, and Shizuo will never quite forget it.

It’s not fair. He hates Izaya, _hates him,_ and the last thing he wants is to be stuck worrying about him forever.

The flea’s reaction to the soft of his bowtie and his own much slower pulse is – well, it catches Shizuo off guard. Izaya knows right away, mouths his name and it’s the first connection Shizuo’s seen so far. It makes Izaya seem more like _Izaya_ and less like some broken-up patient with nowhere to go but down.

He responds by moving the informant’s fingers to his lips – tells himself it’s a necessary annoyance, and he’ll wash the touch away later – and when he speaks again he does it as slowly as he can. He saw it on TV once, and Izaya’s definitely capable of at least this much.

“Yeah, it’s me,” he says, and he’s careful to move his mouth to emphasize every syllable.

Izaya sniffles softly but is otherwise perfectly still for a long moment. When he finally does move, it’s with his free hand, the one connected to an extra pile of tubes and wires. Shizuo considers stopping him, but the way Izaya does it – intentionally slow, as if to reassure Shizuo that he’s not going to try anything to hurt himself – keeps him still.

His fingers cross his chest and begin to search the surface of the sheets directly in front of Shizuo. Slow sweeps with tired pauses in between.

Shizuo watches silently and starts to lower Izaya’s hand from his mouth, but the informant holds on to him and refuses to let go. His eyebrows – just visible above the bandages – pull down more so that he looks just like a needy child.

Shizuo understands.

He offers Izaya his other hand, and Izaya takes it without smiling. Presses Shizuo’s fingers to his lips just as Shizuo’s already done.

_Why?_

Shizuo blinks down at Izaya. He’s not sure how to answer that without making a fool of himself, but Izaya’s waiting and he’s calm. Given his earlier reactions and Shinra’s descriptions – it’s strange, but it seems like this is the first time in a long while that Izaya’s been like this.

It’s an opportunity that probably shouldn’t be missed.

“To help,” he says.

Izaya doesn’t move, doesn’t react for a long time. He trembles, but he’s been trembling all along. Because he’s touching someone else, maybe, because he’s scared. Shizuo doesn’t know what to do about that. He doesn’t think he _can._

Izaya’s grip on Shizuo’s fingers tightens slightly, then, as he shudders once – more violently, this time – and turns his head away to resume his silent crying. Shizuo wonders if he should leave the informant like that, because he’s obviously returned to his little shell and maybe he misunderstood Shizuo or maybe it’s because what he wants isn’t _help,_ isn’t anything at all that Shizuo or Shinra or anyone can hope to give him.

“Sorry,” he repeats, but this time Izaya’s hand is there to feel him say it.

He shakes his head slowly, slowly, and when Shizuo starts to pull away again he clings desperately to anything he can get ahold of – hair, fingers, the edge of his sleeve – so the blonde stops and stares and wonders.

 _Don’t go,_ Izaya mouths. _Please._


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _He has a bad feeling – an explanation, but maybe not the one he was looking for – like he knows what comes next._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm uploading two - maybe three - chapters all at once tonight, guys. :) There's a reason for that, though, so stay tuned for an important author's note at the end of 'em. ^^

Shinra finds them like that not much later, and for every note of mortification in Shizuo there’s one of surprised joy in the doctor. He calls it a step forward, and while Shizuo’s not sure that it can or should be called anything so momentous he’s at least glad to hear his friend so enthusiastic about Izaya’s condition.

He moves Izaya’s fingers away from his lips – Izaya twitches, turns his head as if to search for Shizuo – and addresses Shinra with the words he’s been hiding behind warm blushes and irritation he’s sure Izaya can feel.

“Isn’t he just delusional, though?”

“That’s not impossible, I guess,” Shinra sighs, “but it certainly seems that he at least understands who you are and trusts you despite that – right?” Shizuo nods reluctantly, because, well – the way Izaya’d called out to him, mouthed his name – that had been real recognition.

Shinra smiles. “Well, that’s certainly more than anyone else has managed with him so far.”

“Thought he was okay at first?”

Shinra shrugs. “He wasn’t like this even then, Shizuo-kun.”

Shizuo looks back at Izaya, barely parted lips just as bloodless as ever but maybe just a little softer around the edges.

“Dunno,” he admits, because beyond what he sees directly in front of him he’s not sure what to believe in. That he’s somehow special, that something about him is different in a _good_ way? It doesn’t make any damn sense. “He won’t say much.”

Shinra smiles melancholically. “I’m honestly a bit surprised that you were able to get as far as that, anyway.”

Shizuo assumes that he’s talking about the communication, fingers pressed to lips and Izaya relaxed enough to deal with it. He realizes then that Shinra’s been in the process of giving up on ever worrying about how much Izaya has to say – because nothing is nothing, that’s it, that’s all. Broken into so many silent pieces that no one and nothing could ever hope to draw words out –

Dammit, he needs a fucking _cigarette…_

“What’s so… _special_ about me, Shinra? He should be terrified – if not of me, then…”

“I’m sorry,” Shinra murmurs, “I couldn’t even begin to explain that to you. I understand where Izaya-kun is at physically, but what’s going on inside – your guess is just about as good as mine.”

“I can’t even – Shinra, I don’t _know_ him.” He gestures helplessly at Izaya, who flinches slightly – and how does he know, dammit, how does he know what Shizuo’s doing when that hand’s not even on him? – and the lump in his throat is quickly turning to anger everywhere else.

It’s so frustrating. He can’t understand Izaya, can’t learn anything from Shinra and doesn’t want to forget about this any more than he wants to know about it – and he can’t direct the anger anywhere at all, internal or external and it just won't _go away._

So, while Shinra eyes him concernedly, struggles to answer and then attempts to offer something close to encouragement, Shizuo turns completely back to Izaya. The informant’s chest is rising and falling slowly enough, the heart monitor indicating relative calm, but he keeps turning his head slightly from side to side – searching.

What does he hope to gain from keeping Shizuo at his side?

What does he suddenly see in a monster who’s never done anything but hurt him and hate him?

Shizuo swallows the ache in his throat, reaches down and touches the soft black of Izaya’s hair, strokes it and when Izaya tries to get away he keeps going – does it gently, not really understanding what he’s trying to accomplish but no less determined for that.

“He’s scared,” Shinra says quietly. Shizuo hadn’t noticed him approaching, but now he’s standing directly behind the blonde.

Just watching.

“He should be.”

Shinra doesn’t say anything. Izaya’s body tenses up and he tries to reach out and grab Shizuo – succeeds, even, and his hand is barely there and trembling on Shizuo’s chest as his own heart starts to race.

“Shizuo-kun…”

“Wait,” he breathes. “Wait.”

He rests his other hand lightly on Izaya’s chest – dead center, right where Izaya’s hand is on Shizuo – and the informant twitches once – shivers –

– trembles –

– and then slowly slowly slowly comes back down from the high that is fear, pure irrationality conditioned into his very skin.

Shizuo finds Izaya’s hand, offers Izaya his own and the informant timidly accepts it.

“See,” Shizuo whispers. “You’re safe.”

 _Not with you,_ Izaya mouths – slowly, so he must realize that Shizuo needs that, understands…

“Not usually,” Shizuo allows. “But I’m not gonna do anything to you now.”

Izaya’s mouth turns down at the corners.

 _Go ahead,_ he challenges.

Shizuo frowns, too, and he has a bad feeling – an explanation, but maybe not the one he was looking for – like he knows what comes next.

“Why?”

Izaya starts to take his hand back from Shizuo, but on second thought he presses the blonde’s fingers closer to his lips and begins again.

_You said you were here to help, Shizu-chan._

“I –”

_Monsters can’t really help, though. They just destroy and then give it well-intentioned names like that._

Shizuo takes a moment to follow Izaya, to see where he’s going with this and, of course, to even make out the words with nothing but his damn hands giving him information.

He’s already starting to devise other methods – tracing characters into the palm of Izaya’s hand, having him learn things like braille and anything else that could somehow help – when Izaya’s lips start moving again.

And again and again so that Shizuo can’t possibly mistake the meaning –

 _Help me your way, Shizu-chan, help me help –_ and then as the tears start again he adds one more thing, one more terrible awful _wrong_ thing and it makes Shizuo angrier than anything else today has, more than anything anywhere has in a long time.

_Just kill me already._


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _He’s going to die, he’s really managed it – and now Shizuo’s going to kill him, after all, going to take all the pain away and there’ll be nothing left behind._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you haven't read the also-recently-posted chapter eight, you'll wanna do that before reading this one. ^^

Izaya understands the moment that brute opens his mouth to talk – with their fingers held to each other’s lips like they were lovers or something, and it’s funny and really – just leave it to that protozoan to think of something as difficult as this for something as once-simple as speaking back and forth.

Heiwajima Shizuo is a monster.

He’s different, though, in that he’s a monster not only because of his pure violence and rage but also because of the ridiculous sentimentality and social awkwardness and strange insightfulness that make him so unpredictable and too-close-to-human. He’s a monster because he’s really going to try to help Izaya, because somewhere in that idiot head of his is the very insanity that’s been allowing people to think that forcing Izaya to live is doing him some kind of favor.

Everything he says after the tears stop, with Shizuo about to go away and then when he puts his hands on the informant’s head – that’s a desperate plea for the dream to become reality. That’s reasoning that even he doesn’t believe, and so of course he can’t expect Shizuo to accept it. It’s pathetic, is what it is, and if he didn’t already hate everything around him he’d probably hate himself for it.

‘Course, he doesn’t know exactly what’s normal for him anymore, anyway, so perhaps that’s debatable.

He doesn’t expect Shizuo to actually give him what he asks for, but after a long pause he’s given cause to wonder whether the brute just might surprise him, after all.

He feels a strong grip on his shoulders – strong enough to hurt, although of course it doesn’t help that he’s already bruised and cut all over – and he can actually feel the vibrations of raised voices, the quick bursts of hot breath and rage and a light tug on one of Shizuo’s arms just before a third hand comes down to try to pry one of the pain-giving hands loose.

He’s going to die, he’s really managed it – and now Shizuo’s going to kill him, after all, going to take all the pain away and there’ll be nothing left behind.

Nothing…

Izaya feels himself panicking, thought disappearing and he recedes into his shell almost before he even knows what he’s doing. He stops noticing anything, stops feeling or moving and becomes one big blob of fear and pain and _nothing._

He stays like that for what must be a pretty long time, because when he finally comes to again he’s alone.

He thinks so, but –

He lies perfectly still, anyway, tries to hold his breath and disappear.

He’s alive.

He’s alive, and if he becomes as small and invisible as possible, he’ll be safe. It’s become a sort of game he likes to play with himself when there’s nothing but silent darkness and fear. Most of the time something interrupts him – hands, cold formless rope-like things or simple and incredible pain. Sometimes he has... _attacks_ or something, he’s not sure what, but he relives with perfect, awful clarity the final events of his final five-sense day and those times are the worst.

That - it's the worst, he's the worst, it's incredibly awful painful horrible and there’s nothing at all for Izaya to do - panic - forever and _why did it have to be like this?_

Better off dead, no end nothing good just hurt and fear and filth and he can’t help fearing death, anyway, because he’s just that _pathetic._

And so he lets himself cry, sometimes, but that’s only when his overburdened mind can see its way to experience anything as complex as hopelessness, despair.

Pathetic.

Now is one of those times, and so he stops being invisible and starts sobbing. He pretends he can hear it, too, pretends he’s at least making some kind of sound. Brings his hands up to his face and lets the misery rock him, lets the shuddery breaths throw sharp pain like arrows ripping and tearing at his ribbons of flesh.

Someone touches him.

It’s gentle, barely there, and then it disappears from just above his left elbow. There’s exposed skin there, so it’s not impossible, but Izaya hopes beyond hope that it’s all in his head.

When the touch returns in the form of a finger wiping away a few stray tears from the corners of his splayed fingers, Izaya feels like he’s falling.

No, no please – please go away, please don’t hurt –

N-no, he wouldn’t mind that, but – but –

_Calm down._

It’s written into the soft _(rubbed-raw)_ skin of his palm, two hands cupping it before one comes up to draw the hiragana slowly and deliberately.

Someone else is messing with the tubes and things connected to his other hand, so of course there must be two people here again – or _still,_ maybe, ‘cause it’s not like he can tell at all.

_Sorry about before._

A long pause. The finger – Shizuo’s, then, it must be Shizuo’s – repeats the sentence once more for Izaya before continuing with another.

_You can’t say things like that._

_Why not?_ Izaya wonders.

Can Shizuo hear his heart beating fast and terrified? Is there a heart monitor somewhere – no, of course there must be, but is that why Shizuo won’t kill him despite his obviously vested interest in it? Is it because he looks as ruined as he feels, because Shizuo pities or hates him too much to do anything that merciful?

Pathetic.

_Shinra and Celty are worried about you._

If that’s it, Izaya thinks, then he could care less – and so the tears begin again, the pain-wracking sobs and he dives straight back into the depths of the self-loathing and self-pity that he’d so been enjoying before.

He doesn’t want _worry._ He doesn’t even want _help._

He just wants to die.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Important note:**  
>  I'm not going to have any Internet access starting today, June 22nd, and continuing until July 13th. During that three-week window of time, I will not be able to write or update any of my ongoing fics - including this one.
> 
> I am _not_ dropping this fic. This temporary hiatus is simply unavoidable because of real life obligations. After the 13th of next month, I'll be back with updates as soon as I possibly can! ;D
> 
> I know hiatuses are annoying, but thanks so much for reading and bearing with me - really, I'm so glad that a few people like the things I write! :)


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _It’s like watching winter turn into winter turning into more winter. The little changes only yield more of the same._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm back from one vacation and now enjoying a second, but for the next hour or so I have Internet in a neat little cafe. I apologize for the infrequency of my updates, but fear not - I am already working on another!

He feels like an idiot – getting mad at Izaya, hurting and scaring and shouting at him for saying something that – and he may as well face it – most normal people would probably feel like saying in his situation. He’s honestly surprised that Shinra doesn’t ask him to leave the room after that, but given the choice he’d almost rather stay.

He just sits for a while, and Izaya – of course, lacking as he does both the will and the freedom to choose – does the same. Shinra stays off to the side. He claims to be monitoring Izaya for irregularities, but Shizuo knows damn well that he’s just preoccupied by the looming danger of Shizuo’s short temper.

He’s thinking about that now more than ever already, which means that he doesn’t need Shinra to make it worse. He’d like to say as much, but it feels strange with Izaya so close – doesn’t matter that the informant can’t see or hear or sense it, doesn’t matter that he can’t form any judgments or tease Shizuo for the things that remain hidden.

Shizuo’s not used to this yet, dammit, and maybe that’s why he finds himself focusing every waning ounce of his attention on Izaya.

The informant stays catatonic for a long time – not asleep, of course, and Shizuo can tell at a glance. He’s shaking and obviously trying hard not to move, after all, and when he comes out of that trance it’s only to enter another one. His breathing slows and becomes incredibly shallow but his heart rate stays way up and he’s trembling more and tenser than he was even before that.

It’s like watching winter turn into winter turning into more winter. The little changes only yield more of the same.

He starts to cry.

Shizuo doesn’t know how to react at first, and when he glances helplessly up at Shinra the doctor only nods. It’s meant to look encouraging, he’s sure, but to Shizuo it’s a second chance handed to him only with due hesitation. Concerned but out of options.

“This is where you come in,” he insists, and Shizuo would punch him if he didn’t feel the weight of those words as though they were reasonably applicable to him.

“I can’t…”

“Try.”

He does – barely brushes Izaya’s arm at first, and the informant freezing up even worse than before doesn’t exactly help things. Shizuo pulls back right away, sighs and whispers Izaya’s name as though it might actually do the flea any damn good.

The tears, he thinks, and the cuts. They must sting.

He reaches up to wipe the drops away – disgusting, dammit, but _he’s_ already out of options, too – and to keep Izaya calm he immediately traces a message for him in the palm of his hand.

_Calm…_

And that’s good enough, apparently, because from there he’s able to have something like another conversation with Izaya. The informant only contributes a single response, but Shizuo’s pretty sure that the flea understands and that he’s said something good – that Izaya has friends who are worried about him, that because of that he _can’t_ want to die.

That illusion falls apart quickly, and before he knows it he’s gazing down at a complete mess of a person – tears and shaking doubled in intensity to make up for the missed seconds, and this isn’t panic at all – just grief, just anger and misery and regret.

 _(As if he wasn’t already a complete mess of a person, idiot,_ he derides himself, and he’s a mess, too…)

He forgets for a moment that Shinra’s there, that this is Izaya or that he’s ever hated his guts. He’s just a person, just a human and for now he’s in pain and Shizuo – _can’t_ help, doesn’t have any clue how but all the same there’s nothing like a choice here.

He climbs halfway onto the bed beside Izaya, dodging tubes and wires and Izaya’s suddenly-flailing, panic-stricken limbs.

Draws the slight form up and into a hug, one arm gentle and firm and holding Izaya still while his free hand finds the back of Izaya’s head.

Pauses briefly like that, then sighs and eases the informant’s chin onto his waiting shoulder.

He can feel Izaya’s pulse hammering in his chest and throat even more clearly than he can hear it on the monitor, now, and worse than that is the shape of his rail-thin body – bandages obvious even beneath his gown, slender-too-weak fingers clawing uselessly at Shizuo’s back and hair and the obvious rush of air accompanying a silent scream and hyperventilation.

“I’m sorry,” Shizuo hisses, because he is but he has to and Izaya needs this more than he needs to escape the pain.

“Shizuo-kun, what –”

“Don’t,” Shizuo snarls back at Shinra. He can’t see the doctor from where he is now, but he can imagine the hand extended in his and Izaya’s direction, eyes wide and worried and _why would you put him through something like this now?_ “You want me to help, don’t get in the fucking way…”

He knows that close contact like this isn’t exactly normal, either, but it shouldn’t equal panic and yeah – if he’s going to help Izaya for however long, the idiot has to understand that at least one person of three _(or however many he hallucinates, nightmares, imagines…)_ isn’t going to hurt him. He has to take a step in the direction of not fearing every little interaction with other people.

Touch. Trust in something more optimistic than the basic evil of all the world spinning on its twisted axis.

 _That’s_ normal.

“Careful,” Shinra warns. “Those…” He nods at the wires tying Izaya to medicine and machines and who even knows what else, and Shizuo grunts to indicate that he understands. He’s not trying to kill the flea – not even trying to hurt him, just – just looking for something to set himself free of this, too, before days pass and it becomes the routine of guilt and suffocated rage that he knows it so easily will…

Izaya stirs forth from his little, isolated world – stills as exhaustion settles over him, too tired to fight or fear and then he moves just his head to one side. He seems to be trying to get comfortable, actually, so Shizuo loosens his grip further and lets the informant shrink into his chest and the steady beat of his heart.

Neither of them tries to communicate anything.

It’s enough for now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I promise to actually do a little something with the plot in the next chapter. ;D
> 
> (Also, thank you all for reading and waiting and the kudos and comments - that's just so awesome to see! :D )


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _...but in that evil Celty wonders whether there might eventually be something like salvation._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for updating so late; I just got back from vacation and am finally ready to leave for Otakon in the morning. I'm cosplaying Tsugaru and Shizuo on Friday and Saturday, respectively. (Still not sure about Sunday...) Maybe I'll meet someone there?
> 
> Also, part 11 has ended on the kink meme, so for anyone that's interested ~~(and for my own convenience)~~ , here's a [link](http://drrrkink.livejournal.com/7382.html?thread=25042646#t25042646) to the new thread on the overflow post. Obviously, I'll still be posting here just as I always have. :)

Returning from her small handful of odd jobs and errands, Celty would like to be able to say that she’s surprised to find Shizuo waiting with Shinra in their apartment. She’d like to be surprised by his new air of dread-heavy responsibility and something bordering on guilt. By the relative silence in the other room and the obvious exhaustion of forcing help on someone who needs but can’t handle it.

She’d even like to have to wonder what he intends to do from here on, but she knows Heiwajima Shizuo.

“Hey,” he mumbles tiredly, and she nods thoughtfully. Whips out her PDA and then pauses to come up with a decent response – doesn’t want to be transparent, doesn’t want to add to the pressure and certainly doesn’t want to make anything more awkward or infuriating than it already is.

 _Thanks for coming,_ she decides, and Shizuo returns her nod without smiling.

“Yeah,” he sighs. “Sorry – guess I might be here ‘th you guys for a while…”

She wonders if she should fake surprise. Shinra smiles sympathetically from his quiet place on the couch, but it’s Shizuo who responds to her moment of hesitation.

“Figured you’d sorta know already,” he admits. “Thanks.”

Her shadows billow bewilderedly about the open edges of her sleeves. Has she done something to deserve that gratitude?

“Hey,” he starts again, and Celty’s whole body tenses before she’s even remotely sure what she’s so afraid of.

“What do you think about him?” he wonders quietly, and then jumps in to clarify before anyone can ask him to. “I mean, how do you feel about this – this whole thing?”

He looks more downcast with every word, but there’s purpose in it. Celty knows – Shizuo’s not the type to let things go undiscussed or misunderstood, and talking it out will always hurt just a little less than hiding it away.

She wonders if he’s already asked Shinra to fill him in on all the little details. The doctor’s no idiot, after all, but he’s still clumsy enough to want to keep everything to himself. The toll it’s taking on him has been bothering Celty almost more than has Izaya’s condition, and while Shizuo’s intentions probably wouldn’t stem from anything read into or implicitly understood, the result would be the same.

Her friend is sort of impressive that way, actually; he fixes things without meaning to, and that in spite of the fact that he claims not to understand a single thing about how others think. Reading people’s not his deal, he says, but those on his good – non-violent, non-vending-machine-throwing, raging and dangerous – side mean more to him than the limits he puts on himself.

 _Those_ people, he’ll help almost without realizing that he does it.

 _It’s honestly a bit hard to tell whether I genuinely understand his situation,_ she admits after a moment of thought, _but I can’t help wondering if he’ll ever return to being the man he was._

That might be something like a good thing, though – because she’s never been able to like Orihara Izaya, anyway, because nothing he ever did was bad enough to warrant this but that can’t change the fact that he was still a truly twisted person, a child playing with fire and too self-assured to fear. She tells her friend as much knowing that he’ll sympathize more than anyone else possibly could, but the torn expression on his face is more than enough evidence of just how differently Shizuo can’t help feeling.

“It was a shock for all of us,” Shinra murmurs, and Celty turns to face him because she can sense that he’s trying to do the very same thing she is. “Maybe it’s also because we knew him personally, but don’t you think it’s normal to worry about a person – any person – in his condition?”

Right – he can see it, too, the fine layer of tension tracing every curve of Shizuo’s hunched figure. The look in his eyes – confusion, guilt and the shock of enduring a world too quickly changed. Torn and tearing more with every passing second.

It’s not hard to sympathize, but Shizuo is a special case and their attempts to calm him down may only be weakly effective at best.

“You think it was random,” Shizuo says, gruffly.

_We don’t know. He may be able to tell us –_

Shizuo speaks again before Celty can show him the message she’s typing – rocks to his feet and takes a slow breath, then – “He needs help, and I – I mean, I might be the only one who…”

Shinra turns away to apologize. “It’s not your fault, Shizuo-kun, so don’t think that you have to –”

 _–that you have to take it all upon yourself,_ but beneath that unvoiced apology is the acknowledgment that Shinra’s already let Shizuo do just that. If he has a chance then he has no choice but to try, and as a calming influence he’s already indispensable. Trapped, maybe, a closed deal and coming weeks of sorrow but that’s the game life sometimes plays with people like these.

Shizuo is perfect bait for unfortunate coincidences and ill-fated mishaps, but that’s probably because he’s a good enough person to worry about someone like Orihara Izaya.

Shizuo’s hands roll into fists as he grinds out, “I _want_ to. Just – y’know, ‘s like I dunno what else to do – with him like that and everything…” He glances up and then back down at the floor, and in his eyes is something too far from hatred, too close to what could have been affection.

“I’ve never seen the flea as that… _human,_ I guess.”

“Seeing that doesn’t make you this completely responsible, Shizuo-kun,” Shinra warns, but the words are empty because there’s no longer any room for meaning or argument.

Shizuo exhales sharply, grins bitterly – so he’s probably trying to laugh a little, but the attempt gets stuck and broken somewhere along the way and it doesn’t come out quite right.

“Believe me, I don’t wanna be… and I hate him, I really do, and maybe it really was at least partially his fault…”

 _You feel that way, though,_ Celty acknowledges. The tone she’s trying to convey rests somewhere between pacifying and realistic and Shizuo accepts it without complaint. He’s trying so hard to bring himself and Izaya closer together, after all, that he can hardly do anything but agree.

He’s giving up, giving in to it. It’s like letting Izaya’s attackers and his wounds win all over again, but in that evil Celty wonders whether there might eventually be something like salvation.

“You plan on trying to find them, don’t you?”

Shizuo blinks.

“Well,” he admits. “I’ll go crazy if things’re like this all the time, and I have to work sometimes…”

Shinra smiles and nods and accepts that and everything else just as Shizuo has. Celty gets the feeling that she’s seeing some kind of sentencing – a punishment of so many hours, pains and rage and time lost not well-spent. She hates understanding that and the fact that Shizuo must understand it in almost the same way.

They’re faced with a lost cause, no choice but to fix it because the alternative is just that painful and the uncertainty of what things like this do to people like Heiwajima Shizuo.

Celty welcomes her friend, too, but she doesn’t tell him not to push himself.

She knows how pointless that would be.


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _He keeps catching himself trying to make it all better, and that despite the fact that he was supposed to have given up a really, really long time ago._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> At long last! Chapter twelve!

Izaya has only ever thought of himself.

It’s not that he can’t help it – hell, he could care if he tried, and he does – or did, anyway – but that was the caring of a scientist watching cagefuls of lab rats. It wasn’t sympathy and it definitely wasn’t benevolence. Just the narcissistic self-satisfaction of the man he used to be – right, the one who did everything for his own benefit, who laughed at others’ misfortune and who gladly would have watched a person die just as long as they could be deemed somehow worthy of the honor.

He’s always known better than anyone how to manipulate people. That means thinking about others, but it’s an impersonal thing. It means – no, it _meant_ nothing.

He can’t quite reconcile himself to thinking about things in the past tense, but then again he also can’t help it –

– the fact that he’s starting to understand exactly what it means to be ‘empty’ inside.

Today is a good day. He can’t feel the floor beneath his bed vibrating. He doesn’t get the feeling that an invisible someone’s sitting or standing hanging over him, and he’s not trying to breathe under the constant threat of paranoid hysteria. He’s feeling relatively secure, which means that for once he can actually stand to do things like this – like thinking.

The only problem is that thinking is nothing short of boring when there’s no one to talk about it with – and that, of course, only reminds him of the cruel pointlessness inherent in all of this. He’s not going to share his thoughts with anyone, not now and not ever and that’s it – no discussion, no doubt, no choice. He’s never going to be able to visually gauge responses or listen for shifting tones of voice. He’ll never speak under the visage of a million different personas. He’ll never manipulate anyone ever again, but –

– but –

– he wants there to be someone for whom those things won’t matter. He needs someone to toy with – right, someone vulnerable enough, maybe, someone like –

_– Shizu-chan –_

– or maybe if he could just communicate a little – yeah, that might be…

…enough…

The feeling comes on suddenly so that it rocks Izaya from head to toe. He knows right away, feels the change in the air, the little extra heat and _fear flashbacks the hands on his hips yeah they were warm like that and the people standing around him, they felt the same right just like he feels now –_

He feels the weight of something dropped onto his lap, too, and that in itself is real enough that he’s almost pulled out of the attack, sensory flashback with all the trimmings of a live action movie. The human presence itself doesn’t even come any closer – doesn’t try to touch him but moves away – yes, he’s sure that it does – and waits where its limbs, at least, couldn’t possibly reach Izaya.

It watches him.

He can sense it, and in that sensation is the desperately awful feeling that his body is being made someone else’s, that he’s being unraveled and revealed for the dirty mess that he’s become – humiliation and he wishes again that he could beg them all not to look at him, to just ignore him let him die let him disappear –

He jumps as another object – this one lighter, cloth maybe – barely makes it to his chest and then falls down to rest near the one of his two hands that is still relatively more functional than the other.

He’s being told to pick it up, he thinks, and without thinking – too scared to do that anymore, after all, and if he does what he’s supposed to maybe he’ll be left alone or at least killed that much sooner – he lifts the thing awkwardly into the air and tries to figure out what it’s there for. He can’t move his limbs quite right even now, so he drops it on the first try and has to control his trembling just enough to try and find it again.

He doesn’t, but the other object – he’d forgotten about it – is still there and he picks that up, instead.

Sunglasses.

O-oh, it’s…

…it’s him…

Izaya swallows a short whimper and tries not to think too much as he nods stiffly – permission granted, calm just barely returning. He’s not sure how, really, but he trusts Shizuo enough to let him come closer – take the fear away again, erase the shadows with whatever light he might possibly provide – and he does, so the floor and bed vibrate a little and he must be pulling up a chair, moving closer and Izaya can feel his warmth again –

– his hand slowly raised to another’s lips and the soft contours of a greeting.

_Better today?_

Izaya lets his own lips turn down at the corners. It should be answer enough.

He feels Shizuo smile into his fingers. _That’s good news._

That’s – it’s _frustrating,_ honestly, that Shizuo’s just succeeded in completely missing the simple point. He’s the only one in whom Izaya can trust, after all, so maybe if he’d try just a little hard to _understand –_

 _Listen,_ Shizuo mouths, and if Izaya could he might actually laugh at the obvious stupidity of that request. Shizu-chan’s as insensitive as ever, it seems – or perhaps the better word would be clumsy. He doesn’t mean it, after all, doesn’t want to hurt Izaya and doesn’t seem to have caught on to the irony even now.

Izaya nods stiffly, ignoring the fresh onslaught of headache that the small motion triggers.

_You’re more like yourself today, is all._

Izaya shakes his head again – slowly, this time – and then hesitantly presses his free hand to his lips. It’s hard and it hurts all over and his limb is almost too heavy to be lifted after only this much excitement, but Shizuo does at least have the grace to immediately understand and replace the informant’s hand with his own.

 _I can’t ever be that again,_ Izaya explains.

Too blunt – Shizuo starts to pull back, but not before Izaya catches the little tremor that runs through him the moment he understands.

 _You can, too,_ he tries. _You’re not that easy to put down._

Ah – it’s that ache in the back of his throat again… but… crying hurts too much, and it was supposed to have been a good day…

It tears at his chest before he can stop it, though – probably a sob, maybe nothing more than a twisted, voiceless crackling or a broken sigh and he’d like to hear to verify that but it’s useless and stupid and terrible and the thought hurts more than the crying – and the tears well up to sting at his eye and that disgusting, always-hurting gouged-out _hole_ –

_How come, Shizu-chan?_

_How come what?_

_I’m scared. I want to die, but I’m scared._

He thinks. He thinks about having good days and simple stuff like communicating with Shizuo. He keeps catching himself trying to make it all better, and that despite the fact that he was supposed to have given up a really, really long time ago.

 _You don’t want that,_ Shizuo mouths, but of course there’s the just-there heat of his breath on Izaya’s fingers – because he’s an idiot and he’s always saying it aloud, too, if only just a little. _You don’t wanna die, Izaya._

He can’t stop crying. Shizu-chan’s supposed to understand, after all, but today he really is all wrong in every way that counts.

Just then, the bed dips suddenly beside him. He jumps and moves his head uselessly from side to side – _hurts –_ but of course he can see nothing. He’s scared already, alone and wondering if maybe it’s not Shizuo on the bed with him at all, but someone else entirely – so he reaches out again, feels his hand connect with familiar long sleeves and the cuff of a vest.

Shizuo moves Izaya’s hand back up to his lips, smiles into his fingers and Izaya reads:

_It’s called hope, idiot._


	13. Chapter 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Doesn’t matter,” _he usually responds, and with a casual wave of his hand he’s off to see Izaya, to work and then to come back as soon as he’s free to do so._

“They’ll need to come off in around two weeks.”

Shizuo glances up at the sound of Shinra’s voice. He’s been slouched way over a steaming cup of coffee – milk _with_ coffee, maybe, but to Shinra it seems that in just a handful of days he’s already started to seek out caffeine in larger doses – for a while now, muttering every now and then about how he has work soon and he wonders if Izaya’s gonna be okay, having his bandages and stuff changed without the blonde around to keep him calm…?

It _is_ almost too good to be true, the effect that Shizuo’s had on Izaya. Shinra’d been hoping for a glimmer of recognition, maybe, and then he’d expected his friend’s strength to come in handier than anything else. Ironically, though, Shizuo hasn’t had to use said strength more than three or four times in plenty more than twice as many days. That certainly beats the doctor’s expectations; the hysteria’s not nearly as consistent anymore.

It’s an improvement that no one could have seen coming.

Shinra’s present comment is a response to another of Shizuo’s off-hand remarks – one about the informant’s ruined eyes, a topic generally avoided unless it’s temporarily the most serious problem facing Izaya – and maybe that’s why Shinra bothers to speak up – because Shizuo must be more than just idly concerned about the issue if he’s bringing it up from out of such complete nowhere.

“They?” the blonde wonders, voice dulled by exhaustion. He doesn’t sound dispirited, though – just like he’s been working a bit too hard for his own good.

“The bandages,” Shinra clarifies with a little smile. “The ones on his eyes.”

They’ve all become accustomed to using third-person pronouns instead of Izaya’s real name – most of the time, anyway – because the dissociation helps dull the wrongness of this patient’s identity. It creates a distance that’s doing next to nothing for the weighty bonds that are forming all by themselves.

Shinra feels it – never truly happy, never entirely forgetful. Always worried. He can see that it’s maybe a thousand times worse for Shizuo, but that has yet to keep the blonde away on days off and during the in-between hours that should probably be used more for sleeping. He’s working less and less, though, looking worn around the edges despite that and Celty’s asked him more than once whether it’s okay for him to be doing that – _what about the rent, food, is your boss okay with this and you know it’s actually fine – you don’t have to be here all the time…_

 _“Doesn’t matter,”_ he usually responds, and with a casual wave of his hand he’s off to see Izaya, to work and then to come back as soon as he’s free to do so.

“Oh,” Shizuo realizes now, and then he sighs and sets what remains of his coffee down on the table in front of him. “And?”

“I need you to ask him what he wants us to do about the one he lost,” Shinra says, voice quieting as he smiles again – uncomfortable, now, because those aren’t the kinds of questions that anyone wants to ask or be asked.

There’s a reason that they’ve all but labeled it a taboo topic.

“We may also want to think about the other eye –”

“‘S really ruined – right?” Shizuo interrupts, brow creasing and he starts to worry his lower lip – sharp teeth on chapped skin, repeated, rough motion that finally results in a light tear and swelling dot of blood.

Shinra exhales slowly.  “Effectively – yes. It’s almost certainly going to be about as useful as the other…”

The blonde looks away. “What are his options, then?”

“I’d like to recommend a prosthesis,” Shinra explains, “but that would require multiple trips to see a certified specialist –”

“Can’t _you_ do it?” Shizuo wonders, his voice sharp with an unmistakable note of surprise.

Shinra shakes his head. “I don’t have the resources for anything that complex, Shizuo-kun, and a professional will do a better job, anyway.”

“Y’mean… better like more – ah… realistic?”

Shinra tries to hide a shudder by tightening his one-handed grip on his upper arm. The effort’s probably not particularly effective, but Shizuo’s not paying enough attention to catch that brief show of emotion, anyway.

“Yes,” he answers, sounding distant even to himself. “It’s even possible now to connect a prosthetic eye to existing muscles in the socket – so that the wearer is able to move it just as he or she would normally. Izaya-kun will have to start with a conformer – that’s just a soft, white globe to fill the, ah, space – until he heals a bit more, but from there we can gradually work up to a more natural appearance. Using pictures as a reference, it wouldn’t be difficult to recreate his old eye color almost exactly.”

“So, then,” Shizuo reasons, “if he decides to do that, he’ll look –”

“Like he was never hurt. He would,” Shinra agrees, “but that wouldn’t change the fact that he can’t see.”

Shizuo frowns down at the fists he’s formed in his lap. “And it’ll hurt.”

“That’s what worries me,” Shinra sighs, coming as he does so to sit opposite Shizuo with his own cup of coffee warming his hands. “If we wait too long, it may actually become more difficult to have a successful surgery. On the other hand, two weeks could easily be too little time for him to recover mentally, let alone physically. Assuming that he’s able to move then without half as much pain as he’s dealing with now, he’ll still have to be able to go outside.”

“He’d have to be around a lot of people…” Shizuo muses quietly.

“Do you think he can do it?”

Shizuo blinks and clears his throat. Reaches up to rub at the back of his neck…

“I hope so,” he whispers, hoarse like he’s on the verge of tears and misty-eyed because he really _is._ “I mean, I’ll do my best, Shinra, but… I just…”

Shinra forces a smile, but it turns melancholic too quickly.

“I’m sorry. There’s no threat to his life if he doesn’t want to go through with it, and I’m not saying that it can’t wait just a bit longer. It’s only fair to tell him now, though, so that he can make that decision for himself.”

To his surprise, Shizuo laughs through the first few tears and nods. He’s not happy – not even amused, not anything – but he still glances up at Shinra and rasps, “I know. That’s important… and I’ll tell him everything I can understand, okay? And then…”

Shinra raises his eyebrows, surprised and confused by the sudden addendum. “Then?”

“He told me he wants to die,” Shizuo whispers, this time quiet enough that Shinra almost doesn’t hear him. “But it seems like he still wants to live, too, so – I don’t know ‘f I can, but I – I really wanna try giving him a reason to fight for that.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for over 50 kudos, guys - wow!
> 
> Also, I did do some research for this stuff on prosthetic eyes. Don't think for a minute that it's gonna be really accurate, though, because I'm not a doctor or an expert and I'm mostly making it up as I go along. And the two sites I used just so happen to be [Yahoo!Answers](http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20090125161010AACB51R) and [Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocular_prosthesis).
> 
> Hey, I'm always one for those reliable sources. ;)


	14. Chapter 14

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _If he's actually laughing at anyone, it's only himself._

At what point – when and how and _why –_ does Shizuo start to look forward to moments like that – Izaya relatively calm, broken pieces of him coming together all at once and honest words shared through fingers and lips and quiet caresses, tight embraces?

For Shizuo, it might be because hope has always been a thing that had to be clung to – uselessly, of course, always so far from approachable and self-control never more than a vague almost-goal of sorts. Hope’s always been his passive means of acknowledgment – that he’s not really a good person, doesn’t matter that he wants to be, and also that he might be able to change. Maybe. Somehow – and he doesn’t know, doesn’t have any idea, but it’s nice to think about, anyway. It makes all the bad stuff feel a little better even at the worst of times.

Shizuo can’t help thinking about making it all a little more than that for Izaya.

 _He’s_ always had the relative stability to get by even without having to hope for big things, after all, but Izaya’s different. He suddenly lacks that – the foundation that might allow him to rebuild what’s left of his life. He may be missing a lot. He may be suffering because of that and because of the pain and the fear but that’s all the more reason to teach him something like this – that it’ll get better.

_It’ll definitely get better._

Shizuo looks forward to the calm moments and the closeness, then, because everything’s just another step. Izaya’s panic attacks definitely haven’t disappeared – and, yes, changing his bandages is still incredibly difficult most of the time – but even Shinra acknowledges that he’s improving in a real way.

Thing is, only Shizuo’s noticed that _he’s_ been starting to feel a little better, too. So maybe he’s the only one that thinks of this as helping himself at the same time as he’s helping Izaya, but he’s sure he’s not crazy.

The feeling’s gotta be real.

**~**

_I can’t._

Shizuo shakes his head and cups one of Izaya’s rail-thin shoulders in his hand. He’s shaking, but it’s not yet the panic-stricken shuddering Shizuo’s learned to look out for. He’s not quite sure even now what he should do every time it happens, though, so maybe Izaya’s used to being on the receiving end of awkward fumbling-about and hugs born of clumsy desperation – always good enough to at least hold the flea down so that he won’t hurt himself worse, and, after all, Shizuo doesn’t want to be the one at fault if anything like that _does_ happen.

Well – he doesn’t want Izaya to get hurt, period, because hurt means guilt and the weird worry that’s got him thinking all kinds of crazy things. Coming back. Pitying Izaya and wanting this, trying as hard as he is.

“I’ll go with you,” Shizuo promises.

 _No point, anyway,_ Izaya mouths. _Not if they’re useless._

He’s stopped breathing into his words lately – so now there’s no unnerving whisper-screech like wind in dead leaves, nothing to remind Shizuo of the scar that’s still lying hidden behind a curtain of white and the jagged lines of the stitches or staples or whatever the fuck it actually was that Shinra had to use to close it up – the injury from that time.

“I told you,” Shizuo argues. “It’ll feel better. And you won’t have to worry that people’re staring –”

The corners of Izaya’s lips turn up into a smirk, then, and his chest rises and falls like he’s laughing. He does that, sometimes – laugh, almost-smile – but it’s never because he’s purely amused. It’s usually something closer to self-pity, something dark and bitter and angry. Scared. Sad.

If he’s actually laughing at anyone, it’s only himself.

_They’ll stare anyway, Shizu-chan. They know me._

He stops for a second, twists his head to one side and all his muscles drawn tight about the pain he’s probably starting to feel again in the absence of the old medication. His breath is coming fast and slow, his mouth open to drag in air and then to throw it all back out again.

The first day of that – the weaker pain relief, not as much and not as powerful – had left him a sobbing, hurting mess, all pleas for them to take it away and Shinra shaking his head, looking sympathetic and apologetic but never budging an inch. Shizuo had wanted to do something – get him off it more gradually, maybe, or let him recover more than this before taking the drugs away – but Shinra had managed to convince him not to interfere.

“This is why we can’t,” he’d murmured. “If we give him any more of the stronger dosage, his body will completely stop manufacturing its own natural painkillers. He could even fall into a medically-induced coma, Shizuo-kun – no, it’s because he’s too dependent on it, which – yes, I have. Any more gradually and it’d be too late by the time he made it to an appropriately moderate intake.”

That sounds bad, sure, but Shizuo’s not a doctor, himself, and he can’t help wanting to act on what he feels when he sees the flea in pain. So maybe he wouldn’t have listened to Shinra if he hadn’t reminded himself that he’s heard about things like this, before.

The old wisdom that to feel better, you have to start by feeling worse.

He’s been gritting his teeth through it all because of that, because Shinra’s word carries a lot more weight than Shizuo’s and because he’s afraid of the responsibility he’d be taking if he really did try anything, but – well, even so, he still takes that opportunity to apologize.

“I know it hurts…”

Izaya shakes his head, tries to take his hand back and Shizuo lets him. He doesn’t seem to be crying, but there’s something about the stress of trying to get better and the fear that comes with it that never fails to do this to the informant. It draws the physical pain out, forces him into a tight ball with his arms cradled against his chest and Shizuo leaning over him – worrying, as Shinra’s taught him to, that the movement will tear the tubes and wires from Izaya’s increasingly fragile skin.

Worrying that he’s not making half as much progress as Shizuo wants to believe he has.

And, of course, it’s not possible to talk directly to Izaya when he’s like that, so Shizuo just smiles forlornly and waits with his hands in his lap –

– for a while, anyway, but the fit’s an especially bad one, and Izaya doesn’t relax even after several minutes. It doesn’t seem right to just wait it out after it’s gone on for so long already, so Shizuo sighs and smoothes back the fabric covering that shoulder – the one he was holding before. He’s found after numerous trials and a pretty sizable helping of error that that’s one of just a few spots Shizuo can touch without risking an especially strong counter-reaction from Izaya – so he’s sure it’ll be fine, maybe not helpful but at least something more than nothing.

Izaya flinches away, though, and there’s a quick hitch in his breathing that reads _fear._

Don’t touch me.

“Sorry,” Shizuo whispers under his breath.

And he pretends as he turns to go that Izaya can somehow still hear it.


	15. Chapter 15

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _– he clears his throat, squeezes his eyes shut and then opens them tear-bright to shake his head –_

_No one expects you to be perfect._

“It’s not like that,” Shizuo insists quickly, but his hand curls into a fist, anyway, and he might as well be telling her that it is. “I just – know that he needs this. He won’t listen to anyone _else,_ so if I can’t get him to understand, he’ll just… stay like that forever.”

Celty has to resist the urge to type quickly, then, because she wants Shizuo to pay real attention to what she has to say. The point seems simple enough, but that’s probably why Shizuo’s forgotten it in his hurry to fix everything at once.

When she’s finished typing, she passes the little screen to him deliberately and watches shadows spark in his eyes as he gives the screen a quick once-over.

_That wouldn’t make it your fault. You’ve done a lot more than we thought you’d be able to manage, and besides – I think anyone in his position would hesitate over something like that. It’s a big step._

Running his palm and fingers through his hair and then on down his face, Shizuo nods. He looks – well, incredibly grim, like he doesn’t want to believe that – like believing it would be the same as betraying Izaya. Or maybe it’s the guilt, Celty realizes – and she’s sure that he doesn’t enjoy _that,_ either, but maybe it’s become easier for him to let the hurt stick than to work on recovering some of his old levity – the normalcy that was normal for no one else but him, the fire in his eyes and the way he used to laugh or get angry.

Normal emotions, she thinks. He’s missing them, trapped in an endless cycle of not-good-enough and one-trick determination.

That’s sort of funny in itself, though. Celty’s thought for a while now that her friend’s been doing this to set everything right; he’s said as much himself, and not just once or twice. It’s become something of a mantra with him, and then there have been other things – actions, mostly, but also a few extra comments here and there – that all basically translate to giving Izaya something to hold on to.

If freedom is what he wants, then – and Celty’s not an expert, but she’s got a feeling – he’s only doing half of what he should to tone the nightmare down.

 _You can’t fix things with him if you won’t do the same for yourself,_ she adds, and waits anxiously for that dark look to brighten.

It doesn’t, but Shizuo does stir to life more when he answers. “Doesn’t matter ‘f I’m worrying about things,” he argues. “The flea can’t tell.”

 _Fixing him_ – she hesitates – _emotionally – it’s not going to change anything if you don’t also let yourself get over it._

Shizuo’s eyebrow shoots up. “‘Get over it?’ Celty, you _saw_ – all that” – he clears his throat, squeezes his eyes shut and then opens them tear-bright to shake his head – “I – I mean, it’s not gonna go away for him. Probably never – not _really.”_

_What if he can tell, then?_

Shizuo blanches. “Y-y’think…?”

He’s obviously worrying again – this time about how much that anxiety of his has affected Izaya. How much he’s noticed, maybe, and how much he cares. How much it might be hurting his chances at a full recovery – insofar as that’s still achievable, at least – and that’s not what Celty was trying to do at all. She just – needs to know that he’ll be alright. She and Shinra both, because Shizuo isn’t trying even half as hard as he was before to hide the stress and everything it’s doing to him.

That’s why she skips a beat, too, and then holds her hands up to exaggerate something like uncertainty.

_I’m not saying that having you around won’t make things easier for him either way, but have you thought about what it’s doing for you?_

It’s almost a trick question. Celty knows that he has, and Shizuo probably knows that she knows.

The blonde shrugs, swallows hard, sighs. “I can’t _not_ worry,” he decides, “but – I know what you mean. I was supposed to be doing this ‘cause of something like that, but I’ve been thinking…”

Celty nods – still wearing her helmet, just-returned from another job and still more accustomed to speaking to Shizuo like this – prompting him to keep going, think it through talk it through figure it out.

“Thinking,” Shizuo repeats, eyes widening as color floods his cheeks, “maybe I was just too shocked to do anything else. I couldn’t sit around doing nothing, even if it _was_ Izaya. So I stayed.

“It hasn’t even been that long,” he sighs. “But it’s still kinda changed some things, I guess.”

_It’s alright to care._

Shizuo almost chokes on his words.  “I – I know! I was – I mean I do. That’s all I _can_ do, anyway – half the time.” Celty wonders if she should interject, then, but her friend’s not done, anyway – and he smiles melancholically as he adds, “I’d feel like I was taking something from him if I used this just as a way to deal with my own things. I guess… it’d be fine if I could just see him off to a good start.”

_If that’s all…_

Shizuo blinks, for the first time dropping the deeply agonized look to watch her blankly – finally as ready as he’ll ever be to take a bit of advice from someone who might not really know better, at all –

– but it’s better than nothing, right?

_Maybe you’d be better off if you relaxed and just did your best without worrying so much about the end result._

She shows it to him, he reads it and doesn’t react and she keeps going.

_That’s how you started, isn’t it? That might even be how he made it to this point._

_We’re both worried about you, too._

She tries to add more – never enough, it’s never – but he stops her with a hand that’s already starting to tremble just slightly.

“I get it,” he mumbles. “Sorry. I didn’t know I was making it harder on you guys.” Celty starts to protest, but he only shakes his head and interrupts, “‘S fine. I’m used to being hard on myself, I guess. There’s a lot at stake here” – he sighs – “but I’ll do what I can. After all” –

– and he rises to his feet, tentative smile in place and he looks so uneasy, lightening the mood out of what might be a sense of duty – or maybe – Celty doesn’t know – more –

– “I don’t wanna be stuck with the flea forever, right? Bet he feels the same…”

He turns to go, leaves Celty looking after him until he disappears on his way to Izaya’s room and the steady thread of beeps that read drug-induced sleep and barely-life.

They’ll be fine, she reminds herself. They always were.


	16. Chapter 16

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _He knows what he’s doing and he doesn’t, but that was supposed to have been okay._

He’s not sure how long he’s been awake – whether he’s even really conscious right now, relatively lucid and not just dreaming in and out again, jerked back into a hot, chest-aching, painful-restless slew of nightmares and too-strong tides of emotion. That’s how it’s been all day – night, morning, evening, he’ll never know – and maybe Izaya shouldn’t even be bothered by the fact that he can’t distinguish between dream and reality anymore.

He can’t help it. Someone’s holding his hand, but he could almost swear that he can hear them whispering – to him, maybe, or to someone he can’t see at all – until he catches a quick flicker, a needle-sharp flash of light, there-and-gone bright. He imagines a face, a smile, sad brown eyes. Something yellow, but there’s no word left in his slow-creeping mind to describe it any better than that.

He imagines a low beeping, too, like a dolphin chattering away – separated by miles and miles and endless gallons of water – and the antiseptic smell, there’s that, too.

He’s not _thinking_ about any of it, of course – just dreaming, maybe, probably, not processing the sensation to cling – later, bad hard times and fear – to the memory of it, but the presence for now is comforting and that alone is enough. He stops hurting, that throbbing pain in his throat and the pressure everywhere that always comes before crying.

He wakes up.

The beeping is gone, the whispering and the face and the light.

There’s still antiseptic and a hand cradling his, but the touch is heavy, now, and his throat burns every time he tries to take a breath. Not because he feels like crying – he still doesn’t, so maybe he’s been awake all along, maybe he’s still asleep, maybe he’s too tired to feel it either way – but because he hates that smell and everything he associates with it. Disgusting.

His hand is given a quick squeeze. Groggily, Izaya turns his head this way and that – searching, thinking that maybe if he’s still dreaming he might be able to catch sight of something again – and then the hand disappears like another fragment of imagined reality.

It comes back, scares him, covers not his hand or arm or shoulder – the okay places, the ones he’s slightly more accustomed to – but the soft spread of bandages wrapped about his ruined eyes – a steady pressure, strange and new and threatening.

The panic swells in his stomach, his chest, his throat.

It doesn’t _hurt,_ but it feels wrong. It’s too close. The move is too daring, too personal, and something like anger, something like shame and then honest mortification quickly rises to choke him further.

That’s how he knows, always does – that it’s Shizuo, and that _this,_ at least, isn’t a dream.

The pressure is light, barely-there and overtly gentle but it reminds Izaya – of the ghost pain he wishes he could stop feeling, the fear, the shock. Right away, he finds that he can’t stop thinking about how he’ll never be able to go back. He can’t stop remembering what Shizuo asked him before.

 _Let go,_ he mouths, chest hurting as a shudder wracks him suddenly. _Go away._

Shizuo lifts Izaya’s hand again – no longer connected to so many cascading cables, cords, wires, or tubes, so it’s easier to do that on either side now – and speaks to the soft pads of his fingers.

_I can’t. Please._

That word hurts, scares him. He knows what it means, remembers.

_Shi – Shizu-chan, I can’t –_

_I need to ask you something._

Izaya draws back into the bend of the mattress, but there’s really nowhere to run and he wants to go back to sleep, dream more whispers yellow-bright smiles and mechanical signs of life.

 _I can’t stay forever,_ Shizuo explains, and the subsequent downward curve of his lips feels remarkably like regret – so Izaya almost wishes he had the energy to at least ask why.

Of course, he doesn’t. Shizuo keeps going, repeating every few lines and breathing nervous-quick.

_What’re you gonna do when I’m not around?_

Izaya shakes his head; he doesn’t know. Maybe he’ll die – or, actually, he’s sure he will, abandoned when they all grow tired of his empty shell and self-pity and panic. It doesn’t matter and he doesn’t care – doesn’t need anywhere to go, doesn’t need anyone.

Death is fine. Shizuo’s the one who doesn’t get that.

 _You’re – what –_ and it takes Izaya a moment to register the question mark, the tone he can’t hear, only infer – _twenty-five?_ He doesn’t deny that, doesn’t move, so Shizuo chooses to interpret it as an affirmative and keeps going.

_You can’t check out that early, doesn’t matter who you are or how much I hate you._

_‘Hate you’_ – oh, Izaya knows, but he forgets much of the time these days. He’s probably lost most of his own capacity for that kind of thing, after all, and besides – this Shizu-chan is invisible, calm, non-violent and the only one standing between Izaya and total isolation. He’s lips and hands and awkward and – and he tries, really does. If he didn’t, he wouldn’t be here, at Izaya’s side with not so much as a hint of hysteria. Izaya wouldn’t trust him not to do anything too terrible – and it’s true that he thinks less these days about the fact that he first accepted Shizuo’s presence because he believed that he could achieve death through it.

In fact, it’s only when he’s with Shizuo and the future is far away that he doesn’t think about death at all.

And – and – _I don’t want to think about it,_ he pleads. _If you’d just –_

But Shizuo’s already shaking his head, saying something new and Izaya doesn’t catch it in time, doesn’t stop his own mouth before it’s too late and the meaning is lost. He has to wait, still and uncomprehending, until Shizuo understands the need to repeat himself – and he does. There’s an accidental _‘ah,’_ then –

 _I’m not gonna leave ‘till you’re okay on your own, but I –_ and there’s another brief, uncomfortable pause, which is how Izaya can tell that this wasn’t a part of the first statement – _I don’t think this’s good for me, either. I can’t just leave you alone, but I wanna be free to do my own thing – like before._

No one’s stopping you, Izaya wants to point out. You don’t owe me anything.

You’re just a selfish idiot, thinking you can fix everything and then walk off –

 _So I’m not doing it just for you,_ Shizuo interrupts. _That’s how you can be sure – I mean it when I say that I’ll help you do whatever you wanna do. Just decide, that’s it. You were always good at winning, so think of it that way. You – um – you win if you can come up with something you want. Anything._

_I’ll help you. We’ll help you get better, which – sorry – means these, too…_

And there it is again, the gentle, obvious brush of Shizuo’s fingertips against the ruined mess of eyes and sockets, metallic blood and bandages.

Izaya feels his chest tightening all over again, the restless uncertainty clawing at him, eating up his insides. He wants to scream, just once, wants to fight and win – but he’s said it before, himself, that the past can’t be erased, that it’s a fact and that it rules people as easily as if it were God itself. He knows what he’s doing and he doesn’t, but that was supposed to have been okay.

Shizu-chan’s an idiot, but that’s only because he can sit beside Izaya, just like this, and give him all of the reasons and none of the causes worth fighting for.

He’s an idiot for offering himself up as a strong foundation, stable, only to promise that he won’t even be around forever.

_Tell me, then, Shizu-chan… what exactly I’m supposed to do when my only source of hope disappears…?_


	17. Chapter 17

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _So when the informant tries to tug him close, he only hesitates briefly before following the movement, leaning in._

It’s a funny story, actually. Izaya _needs_ Shizuo, and of course he has for a while – but now that he’s acknowledged it, the fact’s a thousand times worse and a million times more indelible.

Shizuo shakes his head, at first slowly and then gradually faster – violently, desperately – _he can’t need me like that, not so badly, he doesn’t mean it, doesn’t know, there’s still hope, a chance – when he gets better –_

But the meaning is clear, and he knows it. Izaya’s just responding to what Shizuo’s promised, to his demands and stupid excuses and faulty explanations. For him, getting better means getting better with ‘Shizu-chan.’ It means remaining close to the man who’s filling the cracks with pieces of himself. It means wanting to reach out and take hold of the hand that’s been so forcefully offered to him.

“Sorry, Izaya,” he whispers. The informant’s lips part for a moment, and then he bites them and shakes his head clumsily. “No, it’s – don’t cry, _please_ …”

 _How long will you wait, Shizu-chan? How long will you –_ a choking sob – _w-wait – here –_

“U-until you don’t have to cry,” Shizuo pleads. He doesn’t repeat himself like Izaya, though, because the explanation’s not worth even that much. “I don’t know what I’m doing,” and that’s not even for Izaya; it’s for him, it’s a clumsy, agonized observation and regret. “Maybe if I hadn’t gotten this involved…”

Izaya stills for a moment. Tightens his grip on Shizuo’s hand, pressing it close to his lips and then curling in on himself.

 _I’ll be glad you did,_ he mouths. _Someday, I really will. I might even thank you._

The words feel like he’s begging for something, and Shizuo instinctively pulls away. He doesn’t know how to deal with that admission, with the tingling, tightening in his chest and the tears threatening his eyes. He wants to get closer, hug Izaya to him like he’s already done a hundred times before but this time he wouldn’t resent it – not _really,_ not like doing an unsavory job out of some higher sense of duty. He’d do it for pleasure and he’d feel a little different about hoping on Izaya’s behalf –

And all of that’s so close to reality that, yes, he pulls away, and yes he stands up, stumbles back. Yes he stammers excuses, calls it impossible and imagines how truly, horribly awful it’d be to _really_ stop hating him – learn to need him, yes, to rely on something with no capacity to do anything more than guilt and hurt him. Yes he’s afraid, yes he can see it coming and yes – he knows that the only way to stop this is to leave now, leave and never ever come back, close the door and keep walking without thinking or looking back _forget that’s all how hard could it be –_

_– impossible._

Izaya’s crying on the bed, his too-thin chest shuddering its way up and down. He’s searching the sheets with his fingers splayed, shaking. He’s mouthing Shizuo’s name, over and over, both the stupid nickname and the one Shizuo always used to insist on.

The blonde takes an uncertain step forward again, trembling, and covers one searching hand with his own.

He strokes it slowly, willing Izaya to calm down, and he does – turns his head and forces a half-smile through the tears still shining on his cheeks.

 _I’ll get mad,_ he promises. Shizuo’s not sure if he means the patting – treating him like a child, that could be it, and Shizuo hopes it is – or the running off, betraying the sense of solidarity Shizuo’s supposed to be promoting.

“Sorry,” he whispers. He writes it in the palm of Izaya’s hand, then speaks aloud as he adds, “I just – wasn’t supposed to see you like this, and we were supposed to hate each other. It’s so wrong” – he laughs, pointlessly false cheer – “feels like everything’s getting more and more messed up all the time…”

Izaya turns away for a moment, then turns back and pushes his free hand through the air until he finds Shizuo’s shoulder and bunches the fabric of his shirt up in his hand. Shizuo’s heart pounds, seeing that – Izaya moving on his own again, kind of getting away  from the bed, and calm – so when the informant tries to tug him close, he only hesitates briefly before following the movement, leaning in.

_Right. Everything Shizu-chan does is wrong. You can’t fix it, so don’t bother trying._

“What’s that supposed to –?”

Izaya shakes his head, lets go of Shizuo’s shoulder and pulls his other hand free of the blonde’s. Shizuo wonders if the conversation’s supposed to end there – fuck, and he hasn’t convinced the flea of anything, hasn’t accomplished a single damn thing, confusion aside – but Izaya surprises him by reaching up and –

– and cupping his face in his hands, bony and thin and cold and alive fingers.

Shizuo’s mouth falls open, and for a fleeting moment nothing moves. And then Izaya’s hands move a little higher, his fingers tickling Shizuo’s cheeks and reaching his hairline and continuing until he’s tangled them in messy blonde. (Briefly, Shizuo regrets his decision not to shower before coming today – but Izaya’s the same if not a lot worse, so it’s – okay, probably.)

He’s careful not to move too much – pull back, come close – because he’s already much closer than he should be, anyway, and then this is the first time in might-as-well-be-forever that Izaya’s initiated touch on his own. He’s afraid he’ll shatter that little bit of daring if he moves. He’s afraid he’ll startle it away.

_Shizu-chan’s really docile, after all…_

Shizuo blinks, hesitating, then nods very slightly. Without Izaya’s hands in his or on his lips, it’s all he can do to respond.

_Just remember that it was you who messed it all up to begin with, Shizu-chan. I’m supposed to die, and you’re supposed to be happy about it. But you’re the one who wanted me to like you, right?_

A quick and defiant shake of his head, but Izaya only smiles – it’s a little strained – and mouths one more thing.

_I’ll do it, Shizu-chan; you just have to promise to stay right next to me all the time._

It might be that Izaya’s still too insecure to deal with the operation and crowds and doctors without Shizuo there to support him, but that promise alone is progress either way and that means that Shizuo’s doing something a little better than failing. He definitely can’t keep pushing the flea away – can’t even pretend to mind the way it’s all messed up between them – so he accepts it. He promises with a nod, embraces it with a soft laugh – vibrations Izaya must be able to feel against his fingers –

– and with his hand on Izaya’s at his temple, resolves to carry the burden properly for as long as it takes.


	18. Chapter 18

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _He wakes up to Shizuo's hand still cradling his own._

Izaya realizes it even before they make it to the doctor’s office.

He can’t remember how normal social interactions work anymore. He can’t remember how it felt to take simple cues from others, to see his own presence amidst hundreds – thousands – millions of people as perfectly normal, safe. He can’t remember what a conversation should be when it’s not about “back to normal,” self-pity and uneasy comfort. He feels like he’s lying on his back on another planet, trapped in a dimension that’s never felt quite so strange until now.

He feels like he doesn’t know himself, and he doesn’t understand the people moving around him any more than he can see or hear them. He hasn’t been quite this scared in a while; the trigger of his nerves is set and comes close to snapping every time another wave of cool air shifts against his skin.

He tries to hide – swallows heavily and dulls his thinking – but Shizu-chan notices, somehow, and he brings him all the way back up with a quick, firm-but-still-gentle squeeze of his hand.

Izaya sighs softly, lips trembling, and mouths, _That’s not fair._

 _Doesn’t have to be,_ he reads moments later. Shizuo’s tracing the words into the palm of his hand – probably unwilling to hold another man’s hand to his lips in a gesture that could look anything like a kiss – and he does it so deliberately that Izaya finds himself calming down almost without effort.

_What’s happening?_

_They’re talking,_ Shizuo writes. _Sorry, I don’t exactly understand._ He hesitates before adding, _It’s about things in the eye. Like… the sclera? They said they’d leave that part in…_

Izaya can’t ignore the nauseous twisting in his stomach; it must show on his face, too, because in an instant the back of Shizuo’s hand briefly grazes the skin of his cheek, his other hand strokes back his bangs and Izaya can feel him hovering close, anxious.

He shakes his head spastically for a moment, breath coming quick and uneven.

 _It’s okay. I know. Just don’t say it like that,_ he mouths. _I don’t need to –_ he swallows thickly – _I’d rather not have it explained to me, Shizu-chan._

_I’m sorry._

A pause, then – _Ah, they, uh – I need to ask something. Okay?_

Izaya sets his lips in a firm line, wills himself not to cry – wonders whether he’ll even be able to do that anymore when this is done – and then jerks a nod.

_Would you rather be asleep? They say you won’t feel anything even if you’re not._

_I don’t want to be awake,_ Izaya nearly chokes. _Not for a long time._

Another moment passes without comment. Izaya can feel Shizuo’s voice vibrating somewhere above him, so he can only assume that he’s having a conversation with the doctors – doctor, he supposes, and Shinra, who’s here today as just another friend.

He feels a little, irrational pang of jealousy. He does, sometimes – because Shizuo’s always been a mess, but now he’s so much better off than Izaya that it’s almost funny. He can still talk, listen, hear and laugh. He can live a normal life, and simple things like this are still very easy for him.

For Izaya, _everything_ feels impossible.

_How much warning do you want?_

_N-not too much._ He doesn’t want to admit that he’s likely to give up before they’ve actually done anything, but that’s how it is. If he has to wait much longer, he really will call it quits.

 _Five minutes,_ Shizuo offers. _Does that work?_

Izaya nods. _Shizu-chan._ His chest aches.

_Yeah?_

_You promised. Don’t leave my side._

**~**

Izaya wakes up to less pain than he’d been expecting, but that doesn’t amount to much when the norm for him has become something excruciating even in sleep. He doesn’t even want to wake up, actually; the moment he realizes that he is, he struggles to slip back under – because under is where it doesn’t hurt and he doesn’t think and he’s not scared because he doesn’t dream the same old nightmares.

He wakes up to Shizuo’s hand still cradling his own. It feels sort of limp, though, and for a moment Izaya freezes again. Having at least accepted awareness, he still has to confront paranoid reality. What if something happened while he slept, or what if this isn’t actually Shizuo’s hand at all but some stranger’s?

_You’re awake._

Izaya twitches, tries to open his eyes and finds that there’s nothing preventing him from doing so. Maybe it’s strange that he even still does that – opens them when he wakes up, as useless as they are. He can’t see anything and they hurt and he’s pretty sure there’s still gauze covering them. (He has a hard time noticing it against his skin these days. He’s used to it.)

And, well, he knows they’re not there, anyway. He knows that what he’s feeling now isn’t ruined tissue but something plastic that probably looks nothing like a real eye. A conformer, a bookmark. Now that the worthless mass of flesh is gone, he has to rely on a thing like that to fill the space.

_Shizu-chan._

_Does it hurt?_

Izaya ignores that. _Did you see them do it?_

 _I watched,_ Shizuo responds, and to Izaya it feels reluctant. _I guess… it’s not pretty right now, but we already knew that, right? It’s supposed to be a month before they have the prosthetics._

Izaya twists partially upright and tries to force air through vocal cords that no longer work right. If they did, he’d be shouting, but to Shizuo it probably sounds like a string of gasps and croaking wheezes. Ugly.

_Can’t they do it any earlier than that? I can’t stay like this for that much longer! You promised –_

_I didn’t lie to you, Izaya. For most people, it takes more than four weeks to get just one._

Izaya stills.

_Then what’s different about me?_

Shizuo doesn’t answer.

_Shizu-chan –_

_I kind of lost it,_ he finally responds. _When they said it’d take almost a year._

What he means to say – that he flew into one of his rages just to prove a point, to defend _Izaya –_ and Izaya remembers Shizuo’s promise never to leave his side, thinks that the blonde must’ve been holding his hand even in the instant where he lost control of thought and feeling.

Izaya’s not hurt at all. His hand’s not crushed.

 _Wow,_ he mouths, more because that’s really an incredible urge to protect, after all. It’s not even reluctant, couldn’t be – not when none of the trouble Shizuo’s caused for himself has ever prevented him from falling off the deep end. He hadn’t thought Shizuo had it in him to show restraint in a situation like that, and to be really honest – he’s been waiting for him to run off all this time.

 _I didn’t hurt anyone,_ Shizuo defends. _It wasn’t too bad, but it scared ‘em._

_Thanks._

_I was just pissed off. You shouldn’t thank me for fucking things up like that._

_It helped me, Shizu-chan,_ Izaya argues. _So it’s okay. Sorry for complaining._

Nothing happens for a long moment. Shizuo’s hands creep back from Izaya’s, leaving him without any direct skin-to-skin contact, no way of knowing what Shizuo has to say to him. He’s definitely still there, but he’s gone as still and quiet as the informant himself.

 _Are you… crying?_ he guesses.

There’s no response, so maybe he’s actually right. If Shizu-chan’s crying, his hands are probably balled up in front of his eyes. Izaya’s sure that’s what Shizuo looks like when he does stuff like that – like a little kid, oblivious to everything around him.

He waits, then reaches hesitantly – aching, slow – up to feel for his companion.

His pinky finger catches on a bare forearm. That startles Izaya – he’s accustomed by now to the long sleeves of Shizuo’s bartender uniform, and for a dizzying moment he wonders if he’s actually wrong, if this isn’t Shizuo but some stranger _and what if it hasn’t really been Shizuo all along, from the first day and the first moment? –_ but, as always, the mannerisms feel too close to what Izaya would have expected of his old rival.

He shies stubbornly away, even takes Izaya’s hand and pushes it back toward his chest. Izaya can tell that he’s shaking – not as bad as _he_ always does, but bad enough.

 _I want to see,_ he mumbles. His lips barely move. Shizuo probably doesn’t know that he’s said anything, but that’s not the point.

Shizuo gets to act like this sometimes, too. Izaya does it so much more, but he doesn’t want to be the only one. It’s not that he likes the thought of Shizuo suffering – funny that he doesn’t – so really it’s more like he wants them to be on the same level for once. He’d even do something to comfort him back, if he only knew what was wrong. If he could only reach him from this bed.

 _Come back,_ he tries. He feels for the edge of the mattress, finds it bare of rails or restraints.

He shifts toward it, his legs fighting him every step of the way until he’s dangling them, painful, throbbing, _weak,_ over the edge. Mouthing Shizuo’s name, turning his head slightly in a useless attempt to check for other people, hidden dangers.

He’s scared.

And then Shizuo’s hand is back on his shoulder, both of them shaking now as Izaya takes slow, deep breaths to calm down.

 _The anesthetic,_ Shizuo clumsily scrawls into the palm of Izaya’s hand. _It hasn’t worn all the way off yet. It’s probably too early to try that._

_Don’t go anywhere, Shizu-chan._

Shizuo doesn’t, but he flinches when Izaya’s hand finds his face. It’s wet and hot to the touch, as expected, like he’s still blushing and there are still a few stray tears on his cheeks. Izaya’s fingers won’t cooperate with him when he tries to wipe them away, but Shizuo nods and does it himself with the back of his hand.

 _No one’s ever told me that,_ he says when Izaya reaches as far down as his mouth. _It just gets me in trouble most of the time._

 _Is that all?_ Izaya notes with some surprise.

_Oh, you didn’t – you didn’t know. I guess. That I hate that part – no, maybe all of them._

_What are you talking about?_

_My strength,_ Shizuo mutters, and there’s another rush of heat to his cheeks. _My temper. And then – how fucking useless I’ve always been. Feels like I’m wasting a lot of time getting nowhere, and when I think that it might never change –_

 _–_ he sighs –

_– sorry. I’m not about to make this any more pathetic._

Izaya frowns. This doesn’t line up at all with everything he’s supposed to know about Shizuo, but he doesn’t disbelieve it. It’s just wrong-seeming – for Shizuo to have that distorted a view of everything, especially if it includes everything he’s done for the informant.

 _If I weren’t like this,_ he mouths, _I’d cut anyone who tried to call you useless._

He only regrets it a little, and only because he’s not supposed to be that sappy. He kind of wants to at least hear that Shizuo’s considered that, though, because if he hasn’t –

_I haven’t done anything, yet. I’m trying, I just – anyone else would’ve been better. You’ve gotta know that, too._

_I like having you here._

_You wanted me to kill you. That’s what I’m like._

Izaya stills, then shuffles his weight experimentally and finally lets his eyes fall shut.

 _I want you to help me stand up,_ he says. _That’s all, for now, but you should know that that’s what you’re like to me._

The one person around whom he feels some semblance of old normalcy. A solid foundation of warmth and trust and hope. Strong and now, apparently, a little bit delicate, too.

But that’s okay, he thinks. It might not be a bad thing – helping Shizu-chan.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I found a [good source](http://www.ocularist.org/resources_surgical_procedures.asp) with information on the kind of surgery Izaya's getting. I'm not planning on going that in-depth with it, but for anyone who's curious, this may come up. (Be warned that there are some pretty gross pictures on the page, though.)


	19. Chapter 19

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _But the self-contempt’s soaked so far in over the years that no job – and certainly not a few good deeds – could possibly wash it away so easily._

He looks tired.

Kasuka sighs very softly, but he’s sure that his brother won’t hear it over the high buzz of his own thoughts, anyway. Shizuo never actually orders coffee when they go out for it together, but he’s drinking a cup now – albeit with quite a few packets of cream and sugar – and his brow is drawn tensely. He’s obviously distracted, but that’s probably because his focus is on something else entirely.

Kasuka almost goes as far as asking his brother what’s wrong – or are you okay, or how’s work and did anything happen, do you need to talk do you need help is this not a good time, after all? He’s well aware of the fact that Shizuo must need time to come up with a way to broach the topic – whatever topic – on his own, though, so he continues to sit in silence. That in itself has never made him uncomfortable, anyway – and Shizuo is one of only a few people who really don’t mind his frequent wordlessness.

The moment stretches on. Shizuo fidgets a bit, glances up and back down and – finally. “Hey – Kasuka?”

Kasuka nods, feels his expression soften slightly.

“There’s – I was wondering if you had any ideas. There’s someone hurt” – his brother’s eyes widen, panicked, before Kasuka can even nearly arrive at any conclusions – “I didn’t do it, though. Not that it matters,” he adds more quietly, and downs the rest of his coffee. “It’s just that – it was really bad, and I guess I did feel sort of responsible. At first.”

“But you didn’t do it,” Kasuka restates. He leans close and searches his brother’s face for some clue. “That was nice of you.”

Shizuo blushes and shakes his head. “It’s not like that anymore, though. I think I just – now I just want him to get better. Just because.”

“Is that not okay?”

“It’s okay,” Shizuo mumbles. “I think it’s probably okay. Just… weird.”

Kasuka’s gaze turns searching, but he says nothing. He has a pretty good idea now of who Shizuo’s talking about, but when it comes to _him_ – right or wrong, it’s best to let Shizuo say it first.

Shizuo leans back in his chair, then, and nearly closes his eyes. They flutter open dazedly; he really is tired, he’s as good as falling asleep already. “Sorry,” he groans, again dragging himself forward and propping his chin up on the heels of both hands. “He had a surgery just the other day, so there’s been kind of a lot to do.”

“Is work okay?” Kasuka wonders, tone muted.

Shizuo grunts softly. “I can’t do as much lately, but Tom-san said it was fine after I explained things. Just as long as it doesn’t go on for a long time.”

Kasuka can’t help resenting that slightly – that Shizuo would tell his boss everything even before he’d tell his little brother. He smiles, anyway, though – just a small one, quiet. It _is_ good, seeing Shizuo hold the same job for so long. It seems good for him, seems to help.

Except that he looks so tired now.

Shizuo grins sheepishly. “How’s your new movie going?”

Kasuka nods. “We’ll be done soon.”

“Great. I can’t wait to see it,” Shizuo announces with genuinely cheerful sincerity. “Next month, right?”

“Mm.”

Shizuo’s grin doesn’t fade, then, but his eyes do take on a hint of melancholy.

“Nii-san?”

“Ah – yeah,” Shizuo hurries. “It’s just – that’s when Izaya’s gonna get his second” – he stops, wide-eyed, and then stutters – “I – I forgot to mention that, didn’t I? Yeah – it’s – it’s him.”

“Orihara Izaya,” Kasuka muses, unsurprised. “His second surgery?”

“P-prosthetic eye,” Shizuo mumbles, face paling. “Two.”

“Oh,” Kasuka notes dully. That can’t be all, but it’s not a great start. He resolves not to ask for any more information – talking hurts when it gets to be too much, he knows, and there’s nothing good about running painful things into the ground – but he does at least offer his brother another tiny smile, a glow of comfort.

“You wanted advice?” he recalls.

“Oh,” Shizuo remembers. Color jumps back into his face, then – he tries to hide it by using the back of his hand to swipe nervously at his cheeks and forehead – and he curls in on himself just a little more, forms sort of an arch with his back, hunched shyly over the table.

“‘S not that big a deal,” he explains, voice muffled.

“What?”

“F-for after the surgery. I wanna do something for him.”

“A present?” Kasuka guesses.

“Well – sure, maybe,” Shizuo agrees. “Or I could just – _do_ something. Anything. It’s not like we were ever close before, so I guess it doesn’t make a lot of sense to think about this kind of thing now – but things’ve kinda changed for him, anyway, so I don’t know if it’d really matter even if we had. I can’t give him what he really wants, so if –”

Kasuka cuts him off with a gentle wave of his hand. “You’re rambling…”

He can’t help noticing when Shizuo’s hands tighten into fists. It’s not that he looks angry – more the opposite, more the quick shine of his eyes and the way he squeezes _them_ shut, too.

“Yeah,” he rasps. “I guess it’s a dumb thing to do, anyway. Probably wouldn’t make much of a difference –”

Kasuka frowns. “It might. Doesn’t Izaya-san want you there?”

“Y-yeah,” Shizuo repeats, suddenly flustered. “He – kind of said that. Kind of – really. He was acting like he was mad at me for leaving today” – that guilty flicker, Kasuka notices – “but I think he’s giving me too much credit.”

“It’s the other way around,” Kasuka assures him. “You used to fight more.”

“That doesn’t matter,” Shizuo mutters. “He’s hurt bad. I don’t deserve to be praised for not making it worse. He doesn’t even have a _choice.”_

Kasuka nearly cringes at the sharp twinge of sadness that comes with hearing his brother talk that way. He’s always so eager to believe that Shizuo has come to terms with little things like his strength and his temper – and he’s been doing better, he really has – but the self-contempt’s soaked so far in over the years that no job – and certainly not a few good deeds – could possibly wash it away so easily.

He knows that his own words aren’t enough by themselves, either – he knows that they might even hurt more than help, knows that Shizuo probably regrets coming to him for advice, regrets that _that’s_ never the other way around – so he sighs, instead, thinks and comes up with something just a little better than grasping at straws.

“Where is he staying now?”

Shizuo looks confused. “At Shinra’s…”

“For how much longer?”

Shizuo’s eyes widen, but he forces a little smile and says, “Until he gets better, I guess?”

Kasuka tilts his head slightly, lets the sorrow color his expression just enough that Shizuo will definitely notice it. “And then? Can he live alone?”

“C-can he –”

“In his own apartment?”

Shizuo’s whole face and neck go red; it’s clearly the first serious thought he’s yet put into focusing on that more distant future. “W-well – I just kinda thought he could adapt to it –”

“Until then,” Kasuka presses, guilt welling only to be overpowered by something like determination.

The fidgeting from before starts again. “No,” Shizuo breathes. “Guess not.”

Kasuka settles back and waits for Shizuo to draw his own conclusion.

“So – so you’re saying that I should offer to live with him? Just me?”

Kasuka nods shortly.

“I – I wouldn’t mind,” Shizuo says quickly. “I just – it might be too soon for anything like that.”

“Just asking would be fine.”

The bright red flush swells and spreads, turns to shaking turns to more fidgeting and lip-biting. “I really don’t know what Izaya’d say,” Shizuo admits, “but I – I – actually, I probably want it too much. I’m not saying I’d ever do anything, but – but if it’s really like that for me, I can’t offer to share an apartment with him. That’d be just like taking advantage…”

“‘Like that?’” Kasuka repeats, surprised.

“Dammit,” Shizuo mutters, quietly – and then, more loudly but still at just barely above a whisper, he says, “Like – like love.”


	20. Chapter 20

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Shinra smiles wearily at him. “I think it matters that you’ve put this much thought into it.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm honestly stunned by the number of kudos this has! Thank you so, so much for reading and everything! It's literally the most I've got on any of my 60 fics!

That word tears at him, rakes at the tightness in his chest like fingers rending hot flesh, twists. He’s left breathless and Kasuka looks more genuinely surprised than he has in such a long time – not like when he’s acting, but real hushed barely-wide-eyed surprise like Shizuo didn’t see even at ten years with a refrigerator propped way up above his head on scrawny arms and pointless rage.

“Sorry,” he says quickly. For bringing Izaya and this stupid little idea up with Kasuka, for letting it spiral into – into a confession, kind of. It’s too soon, definitely – for him, for Kasuka, for Izaya. “I didn’t mean it that way.”

Kasuka shrugs, doesn’t look relieved or disappointed. Nothing. He smiles a little, like maybe he’s just humoring his idiot older brother. “You’re a good person, nii-san.”

Shizuo swallows to keep himself from gagging. A good person wouldn’t let weakness turn to pity turn to love. A good person wouldn’t let total hatred turn a one-eighty over something as cruel and simple as what Izaya’s had to face, wouldn’t let that be the thing that’d change his mind. His feelings are all mixed up with old resentment, irresponsibility, self-blame and – and, yeah, pity – and that’s all even less okay when he thinks that he probably doesn’t respect Izaya the way he should, doesn’t see him as an equal but as something to be protected. As a symbol of his own good intentions, a stupid little promise that he’s not as bad as they say he is.

“I’m not good enough for him,” he mouths.

Kasuka shakes his head.

“He can decide that for himself.”

**~**

He expects Shinra to say that he hadn’t thought about it, either, but it’s funny – how he’s always so far behind everyone else, so mindlessly focused on the here and now and baby steps.

“By the end of next month, the middle of the month after at the latest,” Shinra says, too blunt. He looks sorry, but not sorry enough to be bargained with.

“That’s so soon,” Shizuo all but chokes. “Shinra, he’s not ready to –”

“I _know,”_ Shinra hisses. “I would’ve preferred to give him a little more time here, too, but he’s recovering much faster than I’d expected him to – physically, at least – and he can’t stay forever, anyway. I’m sure you’ll think it’s selfish, but –”

“I don’t –”

“– Celty and I can’t keep this up forever. Izaya-kun’s still not as familiar with my apartment as he’d be with his own, and in all honesty, I believe that he could even find it comforting – being back in his own home, that is.”

Shizuo’s reeling – too much, too fast – and he can’t help focusing on the one part of that that hits him just the wrong way. “You can’t do it anymore?”

“Shizuo-kun –”

“But what about –”

“Right,” Shinra interrupts him gently. “You did have a reason for asking, after all, didn’t you?”

Shizuo picks up on the implication of that almost instantly.

“Maybe, but it’s not – I didn’t want it to be this soon!” He can’t say what he’s thinking, what he’s told Kasuka already, so instead he mutters, “There’s no way Izaya’ll ever agree to it, anyway.”

“You’re sure about that?”

Shizuo grunts affirmatively, stubbornly, but the crinkle in his brow lightens the second he lets himself consider the possibility.

He hears Shinra hum softly. “You don’t have to offer him anything that involved if you don’t want to, you know. Izaya-kun has plenty of money saved up. Given the right amount, anyone could take care of him in your place.”

Shizuo’s breath catches; for just a moment, he feels the barest flash of rage, pure and uncontrolled and directionless. It leaves with the color in his face, the words in his head.

“N-no, Shinra, he can’t – he wouldn’t be able to –”

“He’d get used to them,” Shinra murmurs. “Listen, I know it sounds cruel, but you’re still not obligated to help him beyond your ability to cope. He may not forgive you if you back out now, but –”

“I don’t _want_ that,” Shizuo groans miserably.

Shinra lets the rest of his sentence go with a low sigh. “Be upfront with him, then. He’s at least lucid enough to tell you honestly where and with whom he wants to spend the next year or more of his life. I’m not about to pretend that I know what you’re thinking, Shizuo-kun, but I can guess. Don’t assume that Izaya-kun can’t handle it.”

“After what happened,” Shizuo whispers.

“Whoever did that to him wasn’t gay,” Shinra all but snaps in response. He looks disgusted again, but Shizuo gets the feeling that the emotion’s not directed at him or at Izaya or at anyone, really, who wasn’t responsible for what happened to the flea that night. “They didn’t do it because they _wanted_ him; they only wanted to hurt him.”

Shizuo shudders. “How is that – it’s not even different, Shinra, I used to –”

“You wouldn’t even go as far as living under the same roof as him if it could so much as _imply_ anything indecent,” Shinra retorts as his hands curl into combative fists at his sides. “Give your self-control a little more credit than that, alright? Izaya-kun’s never trusted anyone without a reason, and shouldn’t that be truer now than ever? I didn’t think I was wrong to assume that you haven’t even thought about doing anything like they did, with or without consent.”

Shizuo bristles. “What the fuck, Shinra?!”

“So there you have it.”

“Yeah? But it’s not like I don’t wanna at least be able to – to laugh with him or know that he feels the same way. He can’t be like that and I can’t expect him to be – but – and I can’t fix him the way he wants, we’ll never be the same” – Shizuo’s voice cracks, disappears, comes back hoarse and tear-streaked – “and what if I can’t stop seeing him the way he is when he’s this fucked up? I don’t wanna know how I’d – how my feelings’d change with that…”

He takes a slow, deep, unsteady breath, shakes his head; it feels heavy. He speaks more slowly, not quite calm but close. “If I told him anything about this, I’d just be setting him up for disappointment. That’s pretty much the same as using him, so what’s it matter if I don’t want s-sex?”

Shinra smiles wearily at him. “I think it matters that you’ve put this much thought into it.”

“Well, I – don’t wanna make him worse,” Shizuo rasps. “I can’t.”

“I’m almost more worried about you,” Shinra sighs, and the way he looks at Shizuo – like he pities him – _him,_ the one with every right and even the ability to give up and walk out now. The one who’s tempted by that potentiality despite the limp form in the next room, the light tranquilizer keeping him calm in Shizuo’s absence.

“Don’t be.”

“You’re wearing yourself ragged,” Shinra chides. “And you’re right; Izaya-kun isn’t in a great position to give anything back to a partner, emotionally or otherwise. That’s hardly ideal for you, either.”

“I can’t tell him that…”

“Why not?”

“Don’t wanna rush him,” Shizuo mumbles into his hand. “I think he’s happy with me not expecting too much of him.”

“But you don’t,” Shinra sighs, “and that goes both ways, too, doesn’t it?”

Shizuo remembers Izaya, his frail hand clinging, desperate. He remembers how happy the informant was for a while after his surgery, waking up and Shizuo crying – and Izaya happy for no obvious reason beyond that stupid little show of weakness. _So maybe it’s good for him to see a little of that from time to time._

“I – I guess… I get that,” Shizuo admits grudgingly. There are lots of things he really doesn’t want, but an Izaya who can’t stop seeing Shizuo as a hero or a savior or – or anything as great as that? That’s pretty close to topping the list.

“So – what? Think if I tell him everything, he – he –?”

He stutters to a stop again as he’s struck – _again_ – by the terrifying reality of just how huge a shock it could wind up being. How completely it might blow away any and all of Shizuo’s past efforts – all the future ones, too. He doesn’t want to betray that fragile trust of Izaya’s, can’t bring himself to think of the flea as ready to hear Shizuo talk like that about him – even if he did it as gently as possible – and yet –

– still –

– still, he’ll probably want to stay with Shizuo. He probably _needs_ it, and Shizuo can’t stand the thought of leaving him to some stranger, to someone who doesn’t even like or care about the damn flea. He can’t lie, can’t leave, can’t hide or pretend that it’s not what it is –

“There’s no point arguing,” Shinra says at length.

Shizuo swallows thickly and closes his eyes and nods.

“I – I’ll talk to him next time he’s calm enough to handle it,” he promises.

His head hurts…


	21. Chapter 21

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _And wouldn’t that be sort of nice, if only Izaya were missing one or two pieces less of himself than he definitely is?_

His dreams are distorted, messy, and confusing. A stream of thoughts and images and emotion, memories – old ones, good and bright with color and sound and his own voice confident – shaking, shaking too, and hurt. Manic, sometimes. Rain. Broken conversations, faces, impressions.

His dreams don’t often make departures from long scenes on endless repeat – not these days, and never so surreal. It’s a nice change of pace, and it’s also how Izaya knows for sure that he’s awake at the end.

He yawns and then cautiously tries stretching; the pain’s not bad, so he takes it a step further and heaves himself upright, lets his full weight – it’s not much, anyway – rest heavily on his arms and shoulders.

And _that_ doesn’t hurt much, either. He lets his held breath go slowly.

Someone stirs at his side; he turns and looks with his not-really-eyes wide open. Alert despite the lingering grogginess.

A hand at his back. He stiffens, but that’s before he notices the faint scent of cigarette smoke. The familiar stench of Shizuo’s cheap shampoo. The hand is gentle, barely insistent and warm – really warm, just like always, and Izaya wonders if Shizuo ever goes outside (where it must be getting colder and colder, winter and snow plus sheets of freezing rain and wind).

Shizuo helps situate Izaya with pillows and the back of the bed raised at an angle to accommodate the new position. Izaya struggles here and there to let Shizuo know that one way and not the other is more comfortable, but by and large he doesn’t have to do much – because by and large, Shizuo already knows exactly what feels better to Izaya.

_Doing alright? Sorry for leaving before. I just –_

Izaya takes his hand back from Shizuo’s, shakes his head slowly and shrugs a little. He’s not about to admit it to Shizuo, but the embarrassment of fighting to keep the blonde at his side – it was ridiculous, he couldn’t have helped it at the time but he hates to think that he’s become so needy as to actually try to deny Shizuo’s right to live a life outside of this room. He’s not that petty, not enough to wish that Shizuo had to live like him, shut up and closed off. He’s not ruined enough to believe that Shizuo would ever let that happen.

 _Did you at least enjoy yourself?_ he wonders. Doesn’t apologize, can’t.

Shizuo’s fingers brush the back of Izaya’s hand; when Izaya doesn’t resist that touch, Shizuo takes it a step further, grabs his hand back and moves it toward himself again. Traces words, something Izaya can’t make out, and Shizuo doesn’t bother to repeat it.

Then – _Kasuka suggested something. I just asked Shinra about it and he agrees, but…_

Izaya squirms a little on the bed. _Don’t tell me you’re already done here,_ he tries to joke, and he forgets to add that Shizuo just completely ignored his first question.

Shizuo’s grip tightens, becomes painful – Izaya flinches – and his response after a moment is quick denial. He doesn’t trace the shape of an exclamation mark into the palm of Izaya’s hand, but the informant can feel it in the way Shizuo’s suddenly become strained, desperately insistent.

_No._

_Then what? Isn’t it bad news?_

There’s a long pause.

_I don’t know. I’m – I don’t know how to tell you._

_Fast,_ Izaya suggests. He can’t get enough air into his lungs – _stupid,_ he mentally reprimands himself. There’s no point in making a big deal of it, and yet – what if it _is_ a big deal and not just Shizu-chan with his incessant habit of blowing things out of proportion? Izaya has neither the means nor the capacity to prepare for earthshaking revelations – not anymore, and it scares him sometimes, scares him now.

He takes a deep breath and mouths the word again. _Fast._

_First – I promise I’ll never lay a hand on you. You get that, right? No matter what._

Izaya nods uneasily. He gets it, relies on it every day and usually doesn’t dare to call it into question. Doesn’t want to have to acknowledge that it needs to be made that explicitly clear.

_I might be in love with you._

Shizuo writes it only once and then stops abruptly, would have pulled away again if Izaya hadn’t grabbed him and held almost instinctively tight.

He’s shaking – _Shizuo’s_ shaking.

He makes a clumsy grab at Izaya’s hand and writes sloppy, malformed words and characters in awkward sentences.

 _I don’t think – want – I mean I don’t need you to feel the same way, but I have to – I should tell you –_ his hands still briefly – _it’s only fair for you to know._

Izaya feels suddenly heavy, fatigued. Numb. _Why?_

_I don’t know. Please just – just don’t think it’s ‘cause you’re hurt or ‘cause of what you said before –_

_After that surgery?_

_Yeah._

Izaya smiles a little – surprises even himself with that, actually. _I hadn’t realized that it would be such a big deal, Shizu-chan._

 _It wasn’t,_ Shizuo tries after a moment. _I mean, thanks – but it wasn’t that._

Izaya takes two deep breaths, slow and suspenseful. It doesn’t hurt his throat the way it used to. His chest doesn’t throb like it did.

 _You don’t know why,_ he breathes, not meaning it as a question. He wonders what Shizuo looks like now; he aches to know. Is he as scared as he seems, shy, embarrassed, sad? Does admitting to this humiliate him and is he ashamed and would he go back to before if the chance ever somehow presented itself?

(Izaya would and wouldn’t – because he hates his now but sometimes he forgets what it all used to be like – and that _scares_ him, makes his warmer past a nightmare world of unknowns and pointless warning signs and danger. Something he can’t always hope to dwell on for some semblance of comfort.)

If only Izaya could read thoughts and emotion in Shizuo’s eyes. He’s _sure_ he could, given just a moment’s worth of chance.

 _I won’t do anything you don’t want,_ Shizuo finally responds. Repeats. Adds, _I won’t ask for anything, and you don’t have to answer me if you don’t wanna._

Izaya shakes his head.

_I don’t know if I’m capable of feeling anything like love anymore, Shizu-chan._

He feels a little like crying again.

 _That’s okay,_ Shizuo responds. _It’s okay, it’s okay –_ he says it a lot and more until Izaya bites his lips and takes his hand back again.

_I get it. And I hope you know you’re ruining yourself._

There’s no response. Shizuo doesn’t touch him again, doesn’t move. Izaya feels himself winding up as the stillness closes in on him. He raises his hand and searches the air above him – half expects grasping limbs and blades to meet him halfway, but they don’t and his breath hitches sharply in his throat.

He finds Shizuo, a little jut of hair, and he moves over more to find a fist clenched in more of what he remembers as yellowed blonde – shaking, still, and there’s a crease in his forehead, between his eyebrows. His jaw is set, his cheeks warm.

He feels so alive, Izaya marvels. He feels so human.

The blonde’s attention shifts, rests now on Izaya; he can feel it, he can feel Shizuo wavering, scared.

_I know. Everyone’s saying that._

_And they’re telling you to leave,_ Izaya guesses, _so when are you going to? You’re stupid, Shizu-chan, but you’re not a masochist. Maybe I can’t keep making you feel worthwhile, after all, and isn’t that what you like about being here?_

 _I don’t know,_ Shizuo mouths. His lips are shaking, too. He keeps coming close to biting them, keeps forgetting, it seems, that Izaya’s fingers are there touching the slightly chapped skin. _No one told me to leave, though. Just that I have a choice._

Izaya’s chest tightens. _Try not to make the wrong one._

Shizuo’s response is quick. He holds Izaya’s hand in his own, away from his lips, and Izaya could swear that Shizuo’s saying something else – loudly, begging, with tears and earnest and scared – but he can’t begin to hear it and that terrifies him, frustrates him, very nearly _enrages_ him.

And Shizuo doesn’t stop moving. He’s still talking, Izaya can feel it, and then he’s writing into Izaya’s palm again, messily, _Come stay with me. My apartment. You can’t stay here a lot longer – but you won’t have to be alone, so –_

Izaya jerks sharply.

Shizuo’s apartment? Shizu-chan? And they’ll live together there, no Shinra with his businesslike examinations and doctorly concerns, no Celty with her pulseless restraints? No medicine or tubes and wires and – and no –

 _Or yours,_ Shizuo immediately amends. _But not ‘cause I wanna live in a huge-ass, fancy apartment like that._

 _What –_ Izaya stops and starts again – _what for?_

_Think you’d make it on your own?_

Izaya flinches. He doesn’t and he wouldn’t and Shizuo’s right to say it, but the bluntness hurts all the same. That’s a very different kind of dependence, and what’s the point? Is that how Izaya’s supposed to assimilate himself back into the normal world? Is living together with Shizuo – with the Shizuo who loves him, who thinks he’s capable of sacrificing so much for a ‘flea’ – is that supposed to remind him of what it meant to be happy? A part of society, a part of the human world? _Normal?_

 _At least now I know why you felt the need to tell me all that, right?_ he muses bitterly. Shizuo’s hands twitch, but that’s all the response Izaya gets; he raises a hand again and presses the back of it to Shizuo’s cheek – still hot, maybe wet. _But if I start to live with you, Shizu-chan – no, if I live with you for a really long time, I can guarantee that at some point I’ll become nothing more than a burden._

He almost laughs, then. Just almost.

_Well, I should be one already, but…_

And the blonde’s already shaking his head, mouth set in a stubborn line because he’s not about to listen to this, a thing that doesn’t match the ideas he’s already learned to hold on to – hard, so maybe Izaya will get lucky and he’ll really refuse to let go. And wouldn’t that be sort of nice, if only Izaya were missing one or two pieces less of himself than he definitely is? If he could remember how to trust in the possibility of happiness – enjoy himself like he used to?

 _I’m already used to it,_ Shizuo writes. He does it twice, and again the repetition is really necessary – because Izaya can’t understand it the first time. Shizuo’s hands are shaking a lot, after all – more than a lot, more than before – so it’s not even Izaya’s fault. He’s grown accustomed to assuming that Shizuo will make it easy for him, that he won’t have to try hard to communicate and that’s because Shizuo’s always worked as hard as someone like Shizuo can to make sure that Izaya’s able to follow every conversation without a hitch.

He’s so often been at least a little calmer than Izaya, not worked up and as desperate as he seems now.

 _That’s not the point,_ Izaya explains, and even as he says it he’s already mourning the impending loss. _You’ll find someone who suits you better. How’s that person likely to feel about having someone like me around?_

He’d always be in the way, wouldn’t he, and after some time Shizuo would probably start to lose touch with the little things. Maybe he’d forget to check on Izaya at some specific time, or maybe there’d be something small missing from one of his home-cooked meals. It’d still taste good, but there’d be a bitterness in the back of his throat to remind him…

 _Never gonna happen,_ Shizuo insists. _I can’t attract people like that, anyway._

Really? Really, because Izaya’s been trying hard to remember Shizuo’s face for a while. He doesn’t know how to see the expressions Shizuo probably wears these days – smiling, crying, concerned, gentle and not a hint of hate or rage – but he’s sure even so that they look as good on the blonde as everything else used to.

He never noticed before, but looking back, it’s – well, he regrets not looking harder when he had the chance.

_You must be kidding, Shizu-chan…_

_If that happens, I won’t lie – okay? And it’s not the kind of living together people do when they’re – when they’re like that –_

– when they’re lovers –

– _so you don’t have to worry. I promise you’ll always have somewhere safe –_

Izaya shivers and shivers and thinks _what choice does he have?_ Shizuo’s already realized it, he’s sure – that sooner or later the decision will rest between trusting Shizuo and buying help from a stranger – and his money’s not limitless, not without the means or the will or the relative independence to earn an additional income working the old way. He’s been working on moving his fingers the way he wants to move them, and somehow it’s been getting better – because it was muscle and not crucial nerves that they cut back then, and that’s probably the only saving grace of the entire incident – but he can’t write well yet, has to face pain when he tries. There won’t be any emails, careful notes on paper or – later, given time to learn – signing. He can’t communicate alone. He can’t walk, hasn’t stood even with help more than once or twice. What remains of his eyes must be like something out of a horror movie.

He _needs_ that somewhere safe. He needs help.

_Shizu-chan…_

_What?_

_Alright..._


	22. Chapter 22

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _He’s kind of gotten used to revising old opinions lately, anyway._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Incredibly enough, I am actually still alive! ;)

“It still doesn’t feel right.”

“What doesn’t? You both reached an agreement after all, didn’t you?”

Shizuo sighs and wilts just a little more into the hard line of Shinra’s couch. The doctor’s watching him with that increasingly familiar look, the one that signals long talks and gentle warnings. Shizuo almost never pays them any attention, but that’s because Shinra’s an obnoxious busybody, anyway, and besides – he’s supposed to be focusing on Izaya and Izaya’s problems. Not on Shizuo’s problems – the ones that are his because _he_ makesthem, which all in all makes them basically his own damn fault and no one else’s responsibility.

He’ll deal with them when he has the time and the energy to – maybe.

When Izaya’s okay, if he’s ever gonna be okay again.

“He wasn’t supposed to feel like he has to rely on me,” Shizuo says unevenly. “He – I came too close to telling him that he should. It’s like I’m holding him back.”

“Only until he has solid ground to stand on by himself,” Shinra all but snaps. “We’ve been over this, haven’t we?”

Shizuo just shrugs.

“He didn’t know how to react to what I said,” he says after a long pause. There are a lot of those these days – long pauses – and a lot of sitting around with Shinra and Celty in the main room of their apartment, drinking coffee in the early morning and late night and sometimes falling asleep on their sofa. Sometimes he feels like he’s at an appointment with a therapist or something – like years ago, way back before he grew up and gave up, when his parents thought that paying for stuff like that’d make some kind of difference in his “behavior.”

“Can you _blame_ him?”

“No, I know,” Shizuo hurries, “but it’s – it’s _Izaya._ He always knew how to react to stuff like that – I mean before, he would’ve just.” He lowers his head and his eyes, presses the palms of his hands to his forehead and sighs heavily. “He’d’ve laughed and come up with some stupid jab, gotten under my skin, even if –”

“Even if…?”

“Even if he felt the same way,” Shizuo finishes reluctantly. He lowers his hands and says, “Not that he does.”

“Don’t expect him to any time soon, if at all,” Shinra mutters as he starts to turn away. “Izaya didn’t used to be the type, but I think it’s safe to say now that if you’re honest with him, he’ll at least return that favor.”

Shizuo nods, stares at his hands in his lap and presses his lips into a tight line.

“If it’s any consolation, he’s been doing better since you talked to him yesterday.”

He looks up, finally, can’t help the widening of his eyes or the way his chest aches with something close to longing. “Was he…?”

“Calm. He might’ve been thinking it over, just like you were. Isn’t that like Izaya?”

Shizuo manages a smile – a small one, sad-eyed and halting – and after wavering for a moment he stands.

“Yeah, that’s… just like him…”

  **~**  


Shinra follows him into the spare room with its still-beeping machine and Izaya thin and pale on the bed. The informant looks sick, but his eyes – when they’re shut like that, he looks almost like he was never hurt there at all.

“He’s lucky the knife dodged most of the skin surrounding his eyes,” Shinra comments hollowly, and Shizuo’s a little too tired to marvel at how easily the doctor manages to guess his thoughts. He knows where he’s looking, how fixed his gaze is. His stomach lurches in response to the extra images dredged up by that, the unwanted ones – Izaya on his back on an operating table, his eye – gone, and the hole left behind – the dead stare, bloodshot white and red peering up from – that tray, the bunch of clinical-looking metal _tools –_

Shizuo shudders. “D-don’t – _say_ things like that,” he manages after a moment.

Shinra sighs. “Sorry. I’d like to check on the rest of his injuries, but I thought I should wait until you showed up.”

“To keep him calm,” Shizuo mutters, more to himself than to Shinra. “Alright.” He walks up close to the bed and pulls up a chair – his chair. Izaya reacts almost immediately; his head turns to the side and his breath catches. He raises his hand from the bed but doesn’t move it forward – all curled in on himself, all shrinking-away and scared save for that one little invitation.

Shizuo accepts it as gently as he can. And the informant’s eyes stay closed.

“He’s been practicing with his fingers,” Shinra murmurs, and Shizuo looks at them. They’re clean, soft, a little cold. Pink and healthy and alive. The tiny cuts and gravel-scrapes have faded to almost nothing. “He still hasn’t managed to reach the level of functionality he had before. I doubt he’ll ever use those knives of his the way he used to.”

Neither of them bothers to mention the other factors keeping Izaya from that; it’s never worth the awkward quiet, the ineffectual regret.

“Shinra’s here,” Shizuo whispers to Izaya. He writes it twice and waits.

Izaya nods slowly, but there’s a quiver to the tilt of his chin that Shizuo can’t help noticing.

 _I don’t need him to check up on me,_ the informant mouths.

Shinra clears his throat. “Tell him I’ll make it fast.”

 _Just real quick,_ Shizuo says. _It won’t hurt._

He recognizes the look Izaya gives him then. He’s as good at reading the quirks of Izaya’s lips as he is at figuring out the words they spell – and he’s gotten a lot better at that, at both – even practiced at home, watching his own face in the mirror with his lips and tongue and teeth forming words slowly to track the movement – and it’s funny because he always thought of it as a useless skill, not even a talent, really, but he’d never deny now that it’s important enough to warrant the extra effort.

He’s kind of gotten used to revising old opinions lately, anyway.

_Shizu-chan…_

_Got it. Then is it okay if I do it?_

Izaya flinches, and Shizuo realizes his mistake after a stunned – and incredibly brief – moment of worry.

“Shinra, how much do we need to look at?” He feels rather than hears the awkward note of panic in his own voice.

“I’m more concerned about the cuts than anything else,” Shinra says. “Why?”

 _The cuts on your chest,_ Shizuo explains quickly. _That’s all. Real quick._

“Shizuo-kun?”

“I’ll do it. Just tell me how, okay?”

Izaya nods at the same time as Shinra does; the doctor smiles a little, and for the most part Shizuo is absolved of the quick flash of guilt that came with making the decision ahead of getting Izaya’s approval.

Shizuo smiles back at Shinra, but he doesn’t feel it like he probably should – because it scares him, knowing that half of the things he says’ll be taken that way from now on – as something meant to serve his special interest in Izaya, as something terrifying and dangerous. As something to flinch and cringe away from, run and doubt and fervently try not to _they have to be there together they have to_ trust _–_

‘I’ll never touch you,’ that’s what he said then, and Izaya definitely believed it – they both did, of course they did – but there’s always going to be the fear in Izaya that goes beyond believing, the paranoia that won’t ever let up.

“Sorry,” he says, out of the blue – not knowing to whom he’s apologizing, not really, and hardly caring.


	23. Chapter 23

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _He's too good at feeling bad._

Even with Shizuo there to help at every turn, Izaya has more bad days than any of them would probably like to acknowledge. Shinra does, too, but – well, Shinra’s never been as simple to Celty as he must be to other people. She can’t always gauge how bad his moods really are, what – of all their shared concerns – causes them, what she should do to help. Her attempts at comfort always feel sort of clumsy to her, but Shinra’s usually happy to at least crack a smile when she tries.

(It wasn’t too long ago that she would have punched him for clinging to her, but now it’s something she offers very freely – and sometimes to calm herself down, too.)

Shinra always sounds so optimistic when he talks about Izaya and how he’s improving, really making progress, but there’s an unspoken heaviness there that never leaves. Every day is more or less the same. Shizuo changes more than Izaya does – he even spends the better part of a week actually sick, and it keeps getting worse and worse with every day that passes. He constantly refuses to accept any of Shinra’s offered help. He pushes himself further, wears himself thin, worries both of them.

 _You have to set an example for him by taking care of yourself, too,_ Celty reasons, but Shizuo just shakes his head and bites back another hacking cough. He worked late today; it’s dark outside, and the forecast says rain. Celty can feel the heady buzz of the coming storm already.

“Has Izaya eaten anything yet?” Shizuo asks tiredly.

Shinra glances up from another of many pages littered with dozens of medical notes. His brow furrows as he gives Shizuo a quick onceover.

“He did,” the doctor lies. Shizuo’s still turned to look at Celty, so he doesn’t see the warning look Shinra gives her. “It wasn’t much, but it was enough. His throat still bothers him.”

That last part – that’s not a lie, but it _is_ an understatement. Izaya’s gained back almost none of the weight he lost in the beginning; Celty tries not to look too closely most of the time, but when she does, she’s always struck by incredulity – it’s amazing that Izaya isn’t quite on the verge of starving to death. He was never particularly bulky to begin with, but the difference is nonetheless noticeable.

Shizuo swallows with obvious difficulty and nods. “Yeah, guess that’d make it hard to even want anything.”

“You need to eat, too,” Shinra sighs. Celty can see it all over his face; he already knows that Shizuo won’t listen, but he has to try for his friend’s sake. “You know you shouldn’t be spending a lot of time near Izaya-kun as long as you’re still sick.”

Celty picks up on the instantly conflicted look in Shizuo’s eyes and jumps in before he can descend into another endless cycle of stubborn refusals: _He’s right. Izaya still isn’t strong enough for that._

Shizuo stuffs his hands in his pockets and sighs. “Then I won’t see him,” he mutters.

“You can rest here for a few days, if it makes you feel any better.”

“Wouldn’t it be better if I just left?”

He doesn’t look hurt, exactly – just guilty, or maybe sorry that he’s let it get so bad only to wind up leaving Izaya on his own for another day or two, anyway.

 _At least explain things to Izaya first,_ Celty suggests. She decides against warning him about the storm; he must know already.

Shizuo hesitates. “Dunno if it’ll make a difference. And you’re right – I don’t wanna get him sick.”

He turns to go, but Shinra’s on his feet and close behind him before he makes it very far.

“Shizuo-kun.”

Shizuo stops and whirls around to glare at Shinra.

“Stay here. It’s just a cold now, but if you go out and wind up getting drenched, it could easily get a lot worse. If you don’t feel like preventing that for your own sake, at least do it for Izaya’s. He does better when he can see you, and I’m sure even you realize how unlikely it is that he’ll get sick just because you’re staying together in the same apartment. There’s a difference between keeping your distance and removing yourself entirely.”

Shizuo stiffens. “I’m not _trying_ to make myself worse! I’d just rather do that than –”

Celty stops Shinra before he can be the one to interrupt. _It seemed like he was looking for you earlier today,_ she writes quickly, and Shizuo stutters to a stop with his eyes wide and cheeks flushed. His tensed shoulders slowly relax. He draws a long, deep breath and nods.

“Fine,” he says. “If I stay – you’ll tell me if he gets sick, right? You have to watch for it.”

“I already do,” Shinra sighs, and Celty does her best to look like she’s nodding. She knows, after all; she still has to help hold Izaya down whenever Shizuo can’t be there for the daily checkups. Sometimes Izaya’s sleeping – or so pumped full of painkillers that they can all be sure he won’t wake up – and even then, Celty stands by while Shinra does his work. She’s decided that he needs the show of solidarity just as much as Izaya does – just like he needs the hugs, the silent pats on the shoulder and even Celty’s one or two completely failed attempts at making breakfast.

She’s learned enough to take Shinra’s place from time to time, but the doctor’s always reluctant to allow that. Celty guesses that he must feel guilty, letting Celty worry so often about so much. Keeping his smile under wraps, their time alone to a minimum, tense, always alert to problems in the other room. It’s probably not the best way to live the life of a couple.

But she doesn’t mind. Shinra’s an idiot; he worries too much about what others can and can’t handle, and for all that, his grasp of his own limits is tenuous at best. He’s too good at feeling bad.

Shizuo reluctantly accepts the medicine that Shinra brings to him. He eats a little, but it’s not enough to reassure Celty; Izaya’s not the only one looking thinner, after all. She lets him get away with it only because he’s impatient to see the informant. Because once he has, they might actually get him to sleep – and he needs _that,_ too.

He doesn’t linger in the guest room for long. She can hear him muttering, sighing once or twice, and then there’s the slow scrape of his chair being pushed back again, covers rustling and an odd, strangled sound – Izaya.

Shizuo looks somehow more exhausted than ever when he emerges to find Celty waiting for him.

 _You should lie down,_ she writes in her alarm.

“Yeah,” Shizuo mumbles. He returns to staring hard at the floor by his feet. “…He’s mad at me.”

 _That’s something,_ Celty reassures him. _Better that than scared or desperate._

Shizuo smiles. “He said, ‘You’d better get your act together if you wanna live with me, Shizu-chan.’ Something like that, anyway. He… still doesn’t talk like that very often.”

Celty’s genuinely surprised to hear it. _That sounds a lot like the Izaya I knew._

“Sure, but he’s disappointed in me. It’s weird – how much it bothers me. I guess it’s just cause… y’know, I get that I’m gonna have to change the way I do things when we actually – uh, move in together.” He rubs uneasily at the back of his neck. “I’m used to working through this stuff, and he’s so much worse off that it doesn’t seem fair to complain.”

_You’ve really changed a lot. Both of you._

Another clumsy smile. “In a good way?”

Celty shrugs. _He wouldn’t have made it this far without you. Just remember that the best way to help him is to take care of yourself, too._

“You said that earlier,” Shizuo points out.

_Because I mean it._

Shizuo laughs. “I really do get it. Just – force of habit.” He shrugs. “A lot of those’ve changed, too.”

_Habits?_

“Mm…”

_Can I ask you something?_

“If it’s quick,” Shizuo agrees. “I am actually – uh – pretty tired.”

_Do you hate Shinra and I for wanting Izaya to leave?_

Shizuo looks taken aback, but pretty soon he’s smiling again – except that now it’s more muted. “No, I don’t. I didn’t like it at first, but I guess it had to happen sometime. If you’d waited, maybe Izaya would’ve resisted more; I’m just glad he’s okay with it.”

Celty allows herself to relax. She and Shinra both needed to know that, certainly and straight from Shizuo’s own mouth; she’ll make sure to use the next chance she gets to tell Shinra.

So one more thing.

 _Are you sure you want to take all that on?_ (Living with Izaya, she means, and caring for him like this – only all day, seven days a week instead of just as often as he can make it work.) _You and Shinra both look bad enough as it is._

“That’s pretty rude,” Shizuo sighs. “Shinra definitely does, though… Izaya asked about him, actually. That was new.”

 _Answer the question,_ she reminds him.

“Thought you only wanted to ask one,” Shizuo mumbles. “…I’m sure. I don’t think I really know what to expect, but I made a promise. I like having a goal, and I like Izaya” – his already-flushed cheeks turn redder at that – “enough to keep this up. Even if it’s tough, it’ll feel a lot better than just leaving him with someone. I couldn’t even do that if it were you guys.”

Celty mulls that over for a moment. She puts real thought into her response.

 _Maybe it seems like we only worry about you,_ she writes. Shows it to Shizuo, then – _You look a little happier to me._

Shizuo shrugs, clears his throat, rubs at the back of his neck.

“Well,” he says quietly, “yeah, sometimes. I think things’ll get better.”

 _They are,_ Celty promises. _Slowly. You’re doing alright._

“Ah – thanks. Thanks, that – it helps.”

_Go sleep now._

“Done,” Shizuo agrees with a little wave, shoulders bowed and back turned as he walks away.

“See ya ‘round.”


	24. Chapter 24

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _He’d probably worry the same way about any joke made in this apartment with its atmosphere like a cemetery, a hospital morgue ill-disguised by the scents of everyday life._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've been as good as dead to this fandom for around a month now, and for that I apologize! I may be splitting my (currently) meager time between this and _Free!_ , but I haven't left you! I appreciate the love this fic's been getting. :)

Shinra finds Shizuo awake early the next morning, curled up in bed and shivering.

He might not have stopped by that guest room at all if it hadn’t been for the groans of discomfort, the uneven rasp of his friend’s breath coming quick. He might not have even heard that, actually, if it hadn’t been for the fact that the door had been left open, just a crack with light in artificial yellow leaking onto the floor of the hallway. Shinra stops to notice that – annoyed, mostly, because how many times will they have to go through this same routine before Shizuo finally grasps the importance of resting properly? – but he freezes and grips his coffee tighter when an especially loud groan derails that train of thought.

“Shizuo-kun? Are you okay?” He pushes the door entirely open and makes a move to enter the room.

Shizuo stiffens under the covers and shakes his head. “Don’t come in. You have to go see –”

“Shizuo-kun,” Shinra repeats, more sternly this time. He takes a second step into the room, closes the door behind him and gradually registers the picture Shizuo makes, sweat-soaked and flushed red surrounded by twisted blankets. One of his two pillows is torn at the corner; it’s leaking stray bits of fluff, some of which are already trying to cling to the blonde’s sticky skin.

“Have a hard time sleeping?” Shinra asks wryly.

Shizuo looks away. “Got worse… I was gonna tell you, alright? Don’t look at me like that.”

“I should hope so. How many times have we done this already?”

“Celty’s only – I mean, she only had to ask me to go easy… twice? I know already.” Shizuo glares at him, but it doesn’t have enough strength in it to look particularly menacing. “I just meant that if you’re gonna check on both of us, anyway, try Izaya first. Don’t want him catching this.”

“Izaya can wait,” Shinra says. “I’ll have Celty keep an eye on him.”

Shizuo sighs and pulls himself upright, sways slightly. “‘Kay – fine,” he agrees – reluctant but maybe just exhausted enough to be reasonable. Mindful now after days and days of doing too much with too little strength left in him. “Then, first – gonna need some water ‘r something. Feels like my throat’s on fire…”

Shinra smiles, comes up and sets his own drink down on the table by Shizuo’s bed. “Anything else? I’ll bring some better medicine back for you, while I’m at it.”

“How much you got just sitting around?” Shizuo wonders, half-scowling at him.

“Enough that I should be able to give you whatever you need.”

Shizuo shakes his head – and cringes, which makes for one more mental note – then rasps, “Head –”

“I figured,” Shinra says.

Shizuo ignores him. “Whole body’s hot, kind of achy. Gets really cold sometimes, but I’m still –”

“Sweating,” Shinra finishes for him. “Looks like a pretty bad fever. How much sleep did you get?”

“Few hours. Stomach woke me up a while ago.” He nods at the door. “Forgot to close it behind me…”

“Please tell me you made it to the bathroom.”

Shizuo glares, responds with his voice steeped in tired sarcasm. “Yeah. Thanks for the heartfelt concern.”

Shinra grins and retrieves his coffee from the table. Shizuo’s eyes follow him back to the open doorway, where he leans heavily into the frame and swallows down more than half of what’s left in the cup; he can’t have slept much more than Shizuo, all things considered.

“Would you consider letting me run a few tests?”

“Ugh,” Shizuo groans. “Rather not. Can’t you do something without all the –”

“Sure, sure,” Shinra says dismissively. “Tired or not, you’re built tough. You’d probably do just as well with some normal fever reducers, but I’ll do you a favor and give you something a little better – just to be on the safe side, alright?”

Shizuo stares at him, doesn’t seem to know how to respond but clearly has next to no faith in any of it.

Fair enough.

As he turns to go, Shinra smiles again and says, “You can make it up to me in a few months. Let me take some tissue samples when everything’s calmed down.”

“Like hell!” Shizuo growls after him.

**~**

He can’t help wondering if the joke was in bad taste – of course he can’t, he’d probably worry the same way about any joke made in this apartment with its atmosphere like a cemetery, a hospital morgue ill-disguised by the scents of everyday life. Humor dies fast in a place like this, the slow beep of Izaya’s heart monitor – now there more to track his emotional state than to reassure them of his continued presence – and the suffocating awareness of how unfair it is, laughing with Izaya lying still in the other room, still sightless deaf and mute, still so far from being back on his feet, not quite able to hold a pen the right way and scared despite all of his and Shizuo’s best efforts.

A bit of consolation: Celty’s said it countless times – that Shinra’s sense of humor is twisted, anyway, off-color at the best of times and not-funny the rest of them. He’s always claimed that it’s the doctor in him, too accustomed to brutality to fear or hold it sacred. Or maybe – maybe now – too genuinely bothered by it not to crave the relief of a joke.

Maybe it helps. Maybe Shizuo doesn’t feel that guilt – or maybe he’s taken to heart every time they’ve told him to let himself feel better. Not just physically – because he says he understands that and he may be clumsy at it but Shinra feels inclined to believe him – but emotionally, the heavy pall and the Good Days.

Funny – Shinra would’ve thought he’d be better at taking his own advice. Celty’s, even more so.

It’s probably more that he regrets implying that Shizuo owes him anything. The reverse is truer, but this – as quick a recovery as Shizuo’s body can manage, some basic hospitality and expensive prescription medication freely given – may be about as much as Shinra has to offer him in return for all he’s done. The burden he’s taken from Shinra and Celty, shouldered all on his own. The secondhand gratitude Shinra can’t help feeling every time he sees Shizuo with Izaya – and the way Izaya calms down so fast, the trust.

That Izaya can even trust anymore – because of Shizuo –

Celty nudges him, and he looks up – startled. “Is something wrong?”

Celty doesn’t answer him, just nods at the door to Shizuo’s room. He hadn’t realized – that he’d just been standing there…

 _You know,_ Celty writes, _I won’t get sick. If I take care of things, you can take a rest. Go out and get some air, okay?_

He looks at her – still in her favorite pink pajamas, the ones he gave her as a gift one day a few years ago – and he can feel her concern like his own, a reflection of sorts.

“I’d rather go out for some air with you,” he says, attempting a half-felt smile.

 _Another time,_ she promises. _Soon. Just go for a walk now._ She pauses for a moment, then adds, _But shower first._

“Am I that bad?” Shinra wonders. His smile this time is just a little less strained than he might’ve thought it’d be. Celty seems to take it well, and something in Shinra’s chest uncoils just slightly. “That sounds good,” he agrees, feels the tension go out of his shoulders. “Message me if anything happens, and don’t forget –”

 _I know all of that,_ Celty interrupts. _You’re taking too long – get going._

He tries for another smile – one more, and it comes somehow more naturally, so he nods, lets her take the two platefuls of food, the little bottle of pills and precariously balanced glass of water. He touches her shoulder as he passes her heading in the opposite direction – done with talking – and finds it just as tense as his own.

Just as worried and tired and full of doubt, but that’s why he loves her the way he does.

“I appreciate it,” he murmurs, sure even without turning back that Celty’s looking after him, smiling one of those smiles that only he can see, stronger on almost every level than he’s ever likely to be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shinra and Celty needed some love. ;)


	25. Chapter 25

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Maybe he misses Shizuo for the sake of missing him, or maybe he’s afraid of what he’ll see when he sleeps. Too bored to do anything else, to like living._

Someone’s hand is holding his, but it only takes Izaya a moment to realize that it’s not Shizuo’s – not the right size, the texture all wrong, too smooth too small and too cold, right, Shizuo’s hands are warm like he’s always feverish even when he’s not.

The girl with the knife – _his_ knife, and his eye. A shock of pain shoots through him, throbs in his ears and he –

– he draws a sharp breath and feels his own hand go cold, colder, his whole body like he’s somehow stopped the flow of blood in his veins with nothing any more complicated than animal fear.

He recognizes dully that the woman is writing something, neat characters in the trembling palm of his hand, but he can’t breathe or think enough to understand. He shakes his head and parts his lips and closes them – he’d scream if he could, beg her to go –

The stranger drops his hand. He almost dares to breathe, but then there’s one on his shoulder and another on his forehead and he thrashes but the pulseless tentacles find his wrists, his legs and chest and they hold him down, sobbing for breath for help for _Shizuo_ –

She pushes something into his hand, cold smooth plastic with – buttons – he doesn’t understand –

Writes again, he squeezes his eyes shut and shudders –

_Celty –_

His breath catches in his throat and sticks there, heart hammering head throbbing pain. He feels as tired as if he’d never slept at all, and he imagines knives poised centimeters away, invisible to his ruined eyes – but this is Celty, the headless rider Celty, he’s almost sure _he hopes oh god he really hopes –_

_Nod if you understand._

He does as she says – nods once, stiffly. His whole body feels stiff and heavy, panic coagulating into paralysis the way it so often does.

 _I’m –_ there’s a long pause, like searching for the right word – _sorry. I didn’t know how else to do it. You’re not in any danger –_

He shakes his head, mouths – lips shaking – _B-been a while._

_What?_

_I’m only used to talking with Shizu-chan,_ he says – slowly, he doesn’t trust her to understand any other way – _but you. Not since –_ and the shame bubbles up in place of fear, doubles the exhaustion – _then. Before._

The Headless Rider makes no response, and she holds him like she’s afraid he’ll bite – nothing like Shizuo, the way he clings to Izaya as though the lifeline went both ways, comfort in contact.

Something surfaces, something like nostalgia, the side of him Celty knows, the one he’s nearly forgotten, himself, but maybe she hasn’t yet learned to remember him differently. This is a different fit, not the same as with Shizuo but not _bad_ , exactly, if he can manage to ignore the fear clawing still at the back of his throat. (It feels so sensitive, the cut he prefers never to think about.) He wonders if he should thank her for saving him, but he can’t make his mouth move to that because it’s still a lie – then and now, too – and he knows that nothing he wants to communicate is coming out right. No pretending, no meaning in his attempts. If nothing else, he thinks, maybe he craves at least as much contact as he can withstand. Maybe that´s all he really wants or needs.

Maybe the reassurance that he’s still close enough to himself to manage it for a little while.

So he waits.

She hesitates. _You seem… better._

 _I’m not,_ he responds. _You saw me – just now._

Shame again. He bites his tongue and turns as much away as he can like this, just to feel more alone, safe. Whole.

 _I’m sorry,_ she repeats.

_What do you want?_

Her fingers waver for a moment, starting single words and characters and never quite finishing any of them.

He guesses.

_Can I see him?_

_He’s sick, but –_

_I know,_ he mouths, and his chest hurts. _Please, I –_

 _For your own good,_ she scrawls, and there’s a sense of finality there, _I can’t let you. Shizuo agreed to it. He said to tell you he’s sorry and that he’ll come when he can. I’m sure he’ll be better soon, but right now he needs the rest, too._

Izaya aches to protest, but he stops his lips and nods heavily. There are tears burning to come out. He thinks that Celty must be able to tell, see the quiver of barely-maintained control and maybe sense the pressure of suppressed emotion rolling off in waves.

_Food?_

The question startles him, but the surprise bolsters his self-control. He shakes his head again.

_You should eat._

_I want to try walking._

He draws a sharp breath after finishing the sentence. He hadn’t been expecting that of himself, so he knows that Celty couldn’t have, either. Her hands leave him along with the cold wisps of shadow and the cool plastic of her phone. For a moment he feels nothing, and then she’s lifting one of his hands into both of her own and writing something slowly, gentle. He imagines a lowered voice, almost a whisper and maybe just a little bit patronizing.

(It’s funny, actually – bitterly ironic – that it took all of this for Celty’s voice to finally become the same to him as everyone else’s.)

_You don’t want my help with that, do you?_

_You’re right. I want Shizu-chan._ He can’t quite dredge up the confidence to add an extra ‘now,’ but he thinks she knows enough to infer it, toneless words be damned.

Her hands leave him again. He feels his control slipping; he’s been clumsy this time, too.

_I’m sorry. Maybe it would be better if I left._

His chest constricts. He doesn’t move.

_There’s food for you on the table to your right._

And then she’s gone.

His insides twist and he twists with them, a tight knot of loneliness and want – something undefined, maybe comfort maybe reassurance maybe help. Maybe he misses Shizuo for the sake of missing him, or maybe he’s afraid of what he’ll see when he sleeps. Too bored to do anything else, too bored to like living. His knees are close to his chest, which throbs steadily with every shaking breath. He waits until his muscles are jumping beneath his skin, high-pitched pain that burns, and then he unfurls slowly, fills the void that surrounds him with pieces of himself until he feels just a little bit better, a little more _okay._

His stomach aches, but he bites back nausea and raises himself up slowly, balancing on the spires of his too-thin arms. He turns and his legs find empty air and pure fear flares in his chest again. He’s staring at nothing and there is a shapeless monster staring back, grinning its favorite toothless grin and laughing. His mind conjures broken glass and sobbing breaths – the latter maybe not so imagined, not the way his shoulders shake and he doubles over despite the pain in his ribs. He hates touching any part of himself these days, but he puts both hands to his mouth and wills himself to be as silent as he can be.

He doesn’t know how long he sits like that, how many quiet audiences he envisions or how many moments pass filled with the quiet horror of dubious certainty. Celty’s here and she’s going to force him down and he didn’t wait long enough before moving, he should have known. And then she’s not there at all and he’s alone and trying to relax. On, off, on.

The tip of his big toe brushes the floor beneath him, and he stiffens before drawing a shallow breath and lowering himself just a little more. He’s wearing the same old hospital gown; he has to focus hard on the way his muscles feel and not on the garment riding up, exposing more of his body, places he knows are covered in scars.

Something tugs at his arm, and he freezes before some rational corner of his mind reminds him that he’s still hooked up to the heart monitor, to one of those increasingly rare IV drips. He doesn’t know what to do – it makes noise, it must, and if he stops it now – but his entire body is shaking and the fear is there but it’s not controlling him, he’s controlling himself and he’ll fight her off if he has to –

– so he frees himself as carefully as he can with his hands as unsteady as they are, bites his lip when he feels stinging pain –

– and he can’t stand immediately, so he lets himself go limp on the ground by his bed – limbs splayed awkwardly, breathing labored already. He feels heavy and sluggish – he hadn’t been expecting anything this bad – but his hands find purchase on the weak frame of his bed and he hauls himself up somehow, leans over the mattress with his heart beating in his throat and his legs almost buckling under him.

If he can make it to Shizuo, he thinks. If he can find his way. That’s all he wants.

He grasps the bed with one hand and slowly, slowly lets go with the other to half-turn – his legs scream in protest – to feel for another support, anything –

Shizuo’s chair. Where Celty had been sitting, where Shizuo’s sat by him for hours upon days and weeks and now months – it must be so familiar to them, but he’s never had the chance to feel it and now here he is trying to decipher how it’s situated, the back, the seat.

It has arms, too; he takes a deep breath and barely manages to grasp them, both hands on either side, before he can fall.

In doing so, he takes his first step forward.


	26. Chapter 26

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _He's had nightmares that sounded like that._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _We're getting a second season. A second season. **[Second season](http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2014-03-15/durarara-gets-new-tv-anime-series).**_
> 
> In honor of the second season. :')

Shizuo tries – really tries – to sleep as whatever Shinra gave him starts to work its way through his system, soothing some of the ache and leaving his head feather-light. His stomach even seems like it’s settled a little, and he can breathe without feeling his throat protest, no fist-sized blocks of wood going down with every swallow of water and saliva. He feels better – not good – but better. And that was fast, which is nothing if not a relief. It means that he’ll be back to Izaya soon enough – so Izaya won’t have to be all by himself, sick in his own way and maybe even justifiably pissed off.

Still, every separate flavor of lingering pain tries hard to draw Shizuo’s attention away from sleep – he wonders tiredly if this is how Izaya feels on the bad days – so his head’s a mess of confusion, a fever dream and he’s wide awake, just dazed. Can’t quite get past semi-consciousness, a weird in-and-out that’s anything but restful.

He doesn’t notice the change in Izaya’s heart monitor until he seeks it out, wants to focus on it and finds one note, a steady line of high-pitched shock surging in his veins.

He’s had nightmares that sounded like that.

“Izaya – Cel-Celty!”

He pushes the covers back and braces himself for a solid wall of cold air before it can arrest his breath in his throat – and then he plows through it, shoulders hunched against it and stumbling-nearly-falling his way to the door, where his fingers slip trying to turn the knob – sweat, and he’s having trouble breathing –

Celty catches him when he collapses through the opening he finally manages to make, the knob broken off in his hand.

“Izaya,” he gasps, looking at her wildly. “His heart’s not – the monitor –”

Celty’s hand goes right to his shoulder. She’s kneeling beside him and her other hand is there for him to take – and he does, muttering nonsense under his breath as he’s helped to his feet and guided down the hall. He must be – out of his mind, maybe, because he actually hesitates out of some misguided worry that he’ll get Izaya sick – sick, not heart-stopped-cold-on-the-bed.

He’s still holding onto the broken doorknob, squeezing it tight to calm himself down, when Celty swings the door to Izaya’s room open.

Shizuo draws an unsteady breath and then lurches forward. “Izaya –”

Celty stops him, raises a hand to cut his protest short and then hurries over to a small cabinet on the other side of the room. Shizuo sways on his feet and stares at Izaya, doesn’t take his eyes off of him. They’re standing, both of them, facing each other and breathing too fast and hard. Izaya’s legs are shaking so much that his knees are close to knocking together, and he looks terrified, can’t have missed the vibrations running through the floor, the way they’ve left the air spinning around him – whatever it is now that Izaya uses to measure stuff like that.

But he’s standing. By himself. Alive and scared and standing on his own two feet.

Celty’s return startles Shizuo; he jumps a little, and it takes him a moment to recognize the disposable masks in her hand. _Put this on,_ she instructs, _and give one to him, too._

“Y-yeah,” he rasps. The cloth feels too thin when he slips it over his nose and mouth, the narrow bands of elastic that go behind his ears on either side –

Izaya pitches forward. Shizuo is there to catch him, clumsily so that their heads knock together, and Shizuo bites back a shout as his own is set throbbing. Izaya produces a strangled gasp, something that might’ve been a cry of pain if there’d been something there to give it substance. He struggles against Shizuo for a moment, fingers grazing the cloth covering half his face – and of course he panics more when he notices that, pushes and then claws at Shizuo’s chest in an attempt to put distance between himself and his imagined attacker.

Shizuo lets him go.

He cringes when Izaya collapses less than half a meter away, gasping and shuddering as his muscles give up ahead of him.

Celty comes around to his side. _Do you need me to hold him for you?_

“No,” Shizuo answers quietly. “I’m used to this… And I need to be able to handle it alone, right?”

She responds – maybe a little reluctantly – with something that looks like it might be a nod, straightens up and finishes with a promise to come if he calls.

_I’ll be waiting right outside._

He nods. “Thanks.”

Izaya flinches, maybe sensing again that there are people moving around him. Which is weird, Shizuo muses, because Celty’s so quiet and light-footed that he can never tell when she’s coming – even with his hearing totally intact, his eyes fine.

He wonders if it’s because Izaya’s getting used to relying on other senses – or maybe instinct, whatever it was that kept him alive for so long, doing the job he did and making as many enemies as he probably still has.

Shizuo still expects surprises. His heart is still beating fast, shocked and relieved and a little bit scared. He could be imagining it; it could be adrenaline-induced wishful thinking, something like a dream left over from all the time he’s spent in bed. But Izaya’s lips move, clear syllables – three – more than once, and his eyes are closed and he’s shaking but his lips are definitely moving.

And that’s – not the kind of surprise Shizuo expects.

He swallows thickly and dares to cover one of Izaya’s hands with his own. The informant flinches again, but his eyes flutter open and then closed. He turns his head.

_Shizu-chan…_

Shizuo responds by squeezing Izaya’s hand – hopes it’s somehow reassuring and not the wrong answer.

Izaya exhales slowly. _I was looking for you._

_You should have waited for Celty._

_I did. I waited for her to leave –_ he pauses, raises himself up on an elbow and faces just a little to Shizuo’s left – _Shizu-chan, did you think I was dead?_

Shizuo hesitates.

 _So you did,_ Izaya surmises.

Shizuo’s shaking when he answers. _I wasn’t just a little worried, dumbass, I was –_

 _I know,_ Izaya mouths. _I know all that, Shizu-chan. You came, didn’t you?_

_Yeah, but now you might –_

He stops abruptly when Izaya smiles. There isn’t anything happy in it, but the unsteadiness is gone. What remains is the melancholy Izaya usually wears, the wanting to cry and not having enough tears left to do it – and Shizuo is the one who can’t relax, now, the one still reeling from a rush of fear-fueled adrenaline and the heat of a fever. He’s all but forgotten about the second mask, the one he’s supposed to give to the flea – but if he did, he wouldn’t be able to read Izaya’s lips, anyway – and what gets him is that Izaya’s never the one who’s more composed. Not anymore, which is funny given the way they used to interact. It forces Shizuo remember things when they were still that way, makes him go still and wordless and staring. The person in front of him isn’t the Izaya from before, but he’s not the broken, scared one, either. This Izaya is fractionally closer to genuine – damaged, but real.

 _You’re not that stupid,_ he says at last. _Why’d you wanna see me so bad? Don’t you care if you get sick? Or hurt?_

Izaya shrugs – cringes a little – and chews on his bottom lip. _It doesn’t matter, does it –_ another implied question, an inflection Shizuo has to imagine for himself.   _I’m still mad at you, anyway, you know. Maybe I just wanted to tell you that._

The wording makes little enough sense that Shizuo wonders if he’s misunderstood something.

_‘Maybe?’ Don’t you know why you bothered to get out of bed?_

Izaya relaxes a little as he lets his breath go slowly – a narrow sigh, exhaustion-heavy and strangely deliberate.

 _You said it yourself, Shizu-chan. I wanted to see you. I was –_ his breath hitches again, lips pressing briefly into a line – _scared. You’re too monstrous to be killed by a little fever, but it might’ve been a good time to tell you some things –_ he smiles almost happily this time – _important stuff!_

Shizuo shifts warily. _Important like what?_

 _I can’t say it, after all,_ Izaya admits more seriously. _Sorry, Shizu-chan._

_You don’t have to apologize…_

_There is one thing._

Shizuo doesn’t have time to react before Izaya continues.

_I’m glad you’re planning to stick around. You may be a protozoan, but you aren’t quite as bad as I used to…_

Shizuo stares.

_I’m saying thank you, Shizu-chan. Thank you for the support._

_You’ve already – when you had your operation, you said stuff like that._ He wills his face to cool down, his hands to stop shaking, heart beating and stomach churning. _It wasn’t worth getting hurt over. If you’d waited, I would’ve –_

 _Helped me walk,_ Izaya guesses. He isn’t wrong, and he knows it – his smile now dares to be confident, cocky – Izaya the way Izaya used to be, insightful and unafraid. More reminders.

 _I’ll ask you to do that, too,_ he continues. _I’m not afraid of – of being close to you, Shizu-chan. I’ve wanted you to have a reason to stay for a while now._

Shizuo twitches. _Even though I – I’m –_

_I’m nervous about plenty of things, but I’m not stupid. You won’t hurt me because you love me._

He remembers the way Izaya’d flinched away before that examination with Shinra, the raw fear and Shizuo disgusted at being the one responsible for it. And it seems sort of stupid in hindsight, because that isn’t the fault of either of them – just something to work through, Izaya more so than Shizuo, and the confidence Izaya has right now is something like the goal. What Izaya can’t help feeling doesn’t have to depend on the ins and outs of his situation. Shizuo gets it. He wants to admit to Izaya that he should have been able to understand it without the help, but that isn’t what he winds up saying. Because behind that is a glow of fondness, gratitude – relief. His head hurts and his throat burns and his body aches but he smiles, anyway, and says –

_Idiot. You just said everything, didn’t you?_

Izaya’s last smile is sadder, secretive, longing but not longing enough.

_Not yet, Shizu-chan._


	27. Chapter 27

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _– and the cuts that are already a lot closer to being scars than they were weeks ago –_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ~~How long has it been? Three months? Oops.~~

The days that pass after that – without Shizuo – pass like words through a drunk man’s lips: hasty, tilted, slurred and hard to pin down, hard to grasp and hard to move around in. Sometimes the days are over fast, insubstantial, and sometimes they never end, they bleed and they hurt like Izaya does – rasping breath and that familiarly desperate desire to know how much longer until the pain won’t linger where there are still shattered pieces and stitched-up chasms.

There’s a saving grace in that the long, congealed, sick-to-his-stomach days are only as common as the fleeting ones. If the former made up any kind of majority, Izaya probably wouldn’t be able to hold himself together. He definitely wouldn’t be able to make out the vague, near-indecipherable things Celty tries to tell him about Shizuo – his head clouded, pounding and yes, he tries to understand – and he fails, he always does, to catch everything because his skin is sweat-slick and insensitive to anything but the heat in his veins and in the back of his throat. Shinra tells him he’s sick, he’s not surprised, but it’s not nearly as bad as what Shizuo started with. He’ll be okay. He doesn’t feel okay.

The only thing that matters is the second Shizuo walks in and Izaya _knows_ through a haze of pain that that’s who it is, hurried, heavy steps and a sudden hand on his; only Shizuo is ever that quick to touch.

_Just finished work,_ Shizuo writes as if he were breathless. _Had to make sure I was really okay, first._

If Izaya were himself, he’d probably point out that it’s too late, anyway – and he could just as easily give this glorified cold right back to Shizuo, the big idiot – but he’s not and he doesn’t, so he just groans – a long, hoarse sigh, probably – and Shizuo stays to hold his hand through the worst of the radiating pain.

That pain isn’t really a result of the slight fever, but Izaya’s fine with Shizuo thinking that it is. He’ll find out later that what felt like days and days only added up to four or five – not even a week – but for now, it feels like three times that, and he imagines that he deserves to be selfish again. He aches to let Shizuo feel just a little bit guilty, just a little bit more motivated to indulge Izaya’s little whims and petty demands – even though all he really wants is another hand holding his, warm and reassuring, and Shizuo would grant him that any day.

Still, he’d like to remember those old, pettier feelings.

**~**

_You have to try it on your own,_ Shizuo scrawls, seeming frustrated. _You did it before._

_It hurt,_ Izaya mouths.

He can feel Shizuo’s sigh as a slight rise and fall of the hands he uses to support Izaya’s.

_How much can I touch you?_

Izaya shrugs hesitantly. He’s tired of his legs feeling like jelly – or like they’re being twisted, rubber-band-style, into minute knots and spirals of ruined muscle whenever he tries to so much as raise them an inch off the bed. That’s how they used to be, though; lately, they’re better, just stiff and weak and mostly useless. He doesn’t know how to answer Shizuo’s question, so he just draws an unsteady breath and gestures at Shizuo to move back from the bed.

_Just don’t let me fall,_ he demands, wondering as he does so just how confident he looks – or doesn’t look – to the blonde right now.

Izaya pushes himself forward slowly – so he slides gradually closer to the edge of the mattress, so his feet take only a little bit of weight at a time, and the ground sends little needles running up and down his legs. He doesn’t let go of the mattress even when he finds himself shaking on two feet and solid ground, otherwise unsupported but with Shizuo – he knows, he can feel him – hovering very near.

_Real physical therapy,_ Izaya mouths. He’s starting to sweat already. _I need that._

Shizuo reaches back and eases his hands off of the bed. He holds one and clumsily writes a retort on the palm of the other.

_I’m good enough for now. Shinra can deal with the specific stuff._

**~**

His second trip out of Shinra’s apartment is a lot like the first. The biggest difference is the weight he plants on his own two legs, on Shizuo’s arm offered in lieu of crutches, but the soundless roar and swell of a city that’s gone on without him lingers like a hand held to his mouth. He can feel the vibrations of busy streets and the occasional rumble of Shizuo’s voice – the intermediate bouts of stillness that he assumes are other people’s responses – but he can’t pick up on the little inflections or follow the pace like he used to, when everything about peoplewas like music and he loved to choreograph his dance to match.

Now he can only shuffle and drag his feet, bite his lips to keep the pain at bay and finally Shizuo stops him, guides him to a bench – cold, he registers, cold metal, the ground beneath it is buzzing with motion – and takes his hand.

_Are people staring?_ Izaya asks.

A pause. _Yeah._

_You don’t like it,_ Izaya guesses. He feels Shizuo move a little, like he’s looking away, and then he responds.

_Doesn’t matter. We’re just moving too slow._

_Well, sorry…_

_You’re doing good,_ Shizuo writes in earnest. _Great. We didn’t allow enough time, that’s all, so –_

Izaya frowns at nothing – eyes closed, that’s a habit – and mouths, _You said you wouldn’t bother with the chair._

The last word leaves a lump in his throat. The wheelchair is humiliating – more humiliating than having to lean on Shizuo to walk at a fourth of everyone else’s natural speed, more humiliating than everything else has been, when he’s feeling good enough to register emotions as secondary as that.

_I told you, you’re doing a good job. I didn’t think we’d need it, so we don’t have it_ – a momentary pause, Shizuo digging for words – _but I can carry you on my back. Is that_ – hands shaking – _better? Okay?_

Izaya bows his head, takes his hands back slowly and imagines that he can hear the beat of his own heart – a nervous, animal hammering against the fragile spires of his ribcage. He waits tremulously for Shizuo to move, but the first swish of air is on the wrong side – to his left, beyond the smooth curve of a dirt-stained metal armrest. Everything – his heart, the weight in his body and the blood in his veins – rises like nausea to fill his throat, but he doesn’t try to run until the stranger touches his shoulder – and then he gasps soundlessly, hurtles back into Shizuo and claws in terror at the front of his shirt.

Shizuo tries to hold his hands still, but Izaya’s throat hurts and his head throbs and there isn’t enough air. So he doesn’t stop, refuses all the way up to the point where Shizuo finally gives up on being nice and _grabs_ him, really grabs him, his thin wrists and shuddering body. He can feel the rumble of Shizuo’s silent voice in his own chest, Shizuo’s clumsy reassurances and bewildered questions.

He doesn’t stop until he’s exhausted himself, limp enough to be guided upright and spoken to via the measured strokes of the tip of Shizuo’s finger.

_Shinra, remember? Celty’s here, too. We’re all being careful, okay, we know you’re scared._

_Not scared,_ Izaya mumbles – silently. The stupidity of his outburst hits him like a literal truck. _I’m really – really not that dumb, Shizu-chan._

_We need to go._

_I forgot for a minute,_ Izaya says desperately. _I knew –_

Shizuo guides Izaya’s hands to his shoulders, his back to him – and he nods when Izaya touches him there, smiles when Izaya reaches gingerly for his face. Izaya doesn’t read lips as well as he reads slow fingers and hiragana and basic kanji, now, but he understands when Shizuo says not to worry – not about looking like he’s doing better than he is, _don’t feel like you have to rush,_ and not about people looking. He’ll beat them all up if he has to, he swears it.

Izaya doubts that he would – not without the kind of provocation that Izaya used to enjoy dishing out – but the determined line of Shizuo’s lips is soothingly comical, anyway. Izaya’s heart hammers – the height, the motion, Shizuo too close for comfort – but he manages to close his eyes, anyway. He manages to fall into a there-and-back-again sort of half-sleep, separated by the wind in his hair from the buzz of the city below him.

**~**

This time, he asks Shizuo for the bloody details, for the where and the how. Shizuo relays everything he’s told gingerly, fingers shaking as if it were _his_ operation he was being asked to discuss. It tickles Izaya, sure, he’s almost comforted by Shizuo’s nervousness – as if he were here to reassure Shizuo, and not the other way around. By comparison, Izaya’s not even scared – not _that_ so much as numb already. It couldn’t possibly hurt worse, and what does he have to lose? He knows how truly disgusting he must look already – like some monster, too pale, too skinny, his hair too long and his eyes – and the cuts that are already a lot closer to being scars than they were weeks ago –

_You listening?_

_I’d rather just start,_ Izaya admits, realizing a little belatedly that, yes, he’s long since lost track of the doctor’s explanation, provided vicariously through Shizuo. _How long?_

He waits a minute while Shizuo turns away from the gurney to ask.

_They can start now._

Izaya’s stomach sinks fast and hard. _You’ll stay?_

_I’ll stay._

The lump in his throat doesn’t recede, so he forces a smile and mouths, _Worried, Shizu-chan?_

(It’s a lot easier, somehow, than admitting that he’s as nervous now as Shizuo’s been all along. It’s less pathetic than acknowledging anything that can compare to feeling that fast-becoming-familiar, hair-trigger sense of impending doom in the painless touch of an old friend.)

The pause that precedes Shizuo’s response feels disproportionately tense; he answers quickly, but Izaya seizes on the brief hesitation and dwells there. He’s so focused on its potential implications that he doesn’t catch the words themselves until Shizuo nudges his shoulder and repeats them again – slowly, with all the deliberation of someone who’s placed the weight of every wish and certainty into simple, ineloquent sentences.

_I don’t need to be worried. You can do this._

Izaya isn’t sure that he can, but that – the trust Shizuo’s placing in him, the… the certainty that Izaya on his own is more than good enough to overcome this – it helps, verifiable based on past performance though it may not be. Something about it rings true in a way that nothing has since he lost the magic of inflection, of sympathetic smiles – who is he kidding, though, he never would have seen anything like that, anyway, would he? – and bated breath and bitten-back laughter. And Shizuo’s face, shy, vaguely-apologetic smiles and warm, loud laughter and – and he can’t remember anything accurate enough to reflect the Shizuo he knows now. He wonders if that’s because he was never allowed to know that Shizuo before, or if it’s because Shizuo’s changed, too – or is it both? Neither? He’s sure he’s thought about this before – Shizuo’s face, the way he remembers it and the way he wishes he could.

So maybe his memory is just bad.

He nods – and his head throbs and his chest aches but the nausea is gone – and he takes a deep breath. And there is a needle in his arm and thin tubes winding all around him and he answers Shizuo with at least as much strength of conviction as Shizuo himself has.

_When I wake up, tell me what I look like. And –_

Shizuo shuffles his weight a bit, but there’s never any extra distance between his hands and Izaya.

_– I want you to tell me what_ you _look like, Shizu-chan. Both of us._

_Me?_ Shizuo repeats. _You already know what I look like. And you’ll look like you used to, more or less. I don’t –_

_It isn’t the same now,_ Izaya interrupts. _Beauty and hatred are both in the eye of the beholder, aren’t they? Human faces are funny like that…_

If he didn’t know better, he’d assume that Shizuo’s silence was the kind of taken-aback-or-pleasantly-surprised silence that precedes surging kisses and uproarious laughter in movies. The idea doesn’t scare him the way it should, but even the little twinge of nervousness is unnecessary. Shizuo just squeezes his hand a little tighter before saying, _I don’t know what you mean, but okay. Stuff’s different, I get that._

_In a good way,_ Izaya promises. _Mostly._

_Oh. Sure. Thanks, I think._

Izaya’s smile is slow and fuzzy at the edges. He feels desperately heavy and inexplicably light at the same time.

_Thanks to you, too, Shizu-chan._


	28. Chapter 28

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Maybe there's still room enough for dreams._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I literally haven't updated since June, so - hey, that's cool.

Izaya is fine.

He’s so fine, in fact, that Shinra almost feels like he should be more concerned – just on principle, really, because at this point worry is the status quo and speedy, uneventful recoveries are the only kind of outcome no one ever so much as talks about. Sure, Izaya has surprised them overall, but his body has always had to repair itself in the midst of panic attacks, struggling, tears and choked-off screams; Izaya himself has never so completely reflected a rhythm of steady, positive change. His smiles have even started to look less forced, and he’s getting better at opening and closing his eyes in ways that come off as natural. If Shinra could ignore the way Izaya never quite stares in the right direction when he tries to interact with any of them, he might not have noticed too big a change in his friend’s face. He’s adapted very well to the prosthetics; no rejection, no ill fit, infection, complications of any kind – really, truly, it’s too good to seem true.

Shizuo tells them various things about Izaya – the things, Shinra guesses, that Izaya tells him he can say, things about what he’s thinking and what he wants and what he _needs._ Given one week to gain more strength via light physical therapy and some of the most peaceful rest he’s had since they found him, Izaya even starts to ask for things himself. They all recognize a few simple gestures, requests – shy, usually, and at times more halting or trembling than at others – for coffee, for the thick pen Shizuo bought for him. A pad of paper, sometimes in order to make more complicated requests – his handwriting, totally different from what Shinra can recall of high school, gradually improves – and he practices plenty, with that and with other objects to regain most of his former motor function.

He may not have what it takes to handle his old throwing knives the way he used to. He probably won’t be aspiring to the level of a professional musician or anything as grandiose as that, but he can perform everyday, average tasks just fine.

Of course, there are still relapses, day-long bouts not of panic but of depression, spells throughout which Izaya refuses everything but the bare necessities – or, alternatively, even the bare necessities. Shizuo tries and always fails to get Izaya to discuss those days when they’re over. At first Shinra thinks it’s because Izaya is somehow dissociating, but he changes his mind at the end of two weeks.

It’s pride, or something like it; the ex-informant is focusing on his recovery, on looking some kind of normal to the people around him. He’s even noticeably self-conscious at times, a fact that seems to concern Shizuo – and he’s the one to tentatively bring it up with Shinra, late one night. Just two, three days max before he and Izaya are supposed to relocate to Izaya’s apartment.

“It’s better than apathy, isn’t it?”

Shizuo absentmindedly folds a marked-up piece of paper from Izaya’s notepad over and over. His eyes are narrowed, but not as tight at the edges as they could have been. Shinra likes to think he’s gotten good at reading that far into his friend’s expressions; Celty has reminded him more than once that he’s better off not assuming too much.

“…I hadn’t thought of it like that. But. Yeah, guess so. Guess it means he’s calmer, now.”

“Very much so,” Shinra says approvingly. “Even I hadn’t quite hoped that bringing a little bit of normalcy back to Izaya-kun would have this big an impact on him.” He pauses momentarily, draws a steady breath in and lets it go a little more unsteadily than he’d intended.

There’s one more thing.

“Shizuo-kun.”

“Mm.”

“Actually, I received an email a couple of days ago. I…” He tries to devise a relatively delicate way to bring it up, but the words refuse to come and he quickly gives up.

Shizuo stares at him, scanning for answers, hints of answers. Signs of danger. “What?”

Shinra looks away. “There’s good news and – and, well –”

“You gonna ask me which one I wanna hear first?” Shizuo mutters. “Just tell me, dammit. What is this about?”

“Well,” Shinra repeats. “Izaya.” Seeing Shizuo immediately grow tenser, he hurries to add, “He’s in no immediate danger, or maybe even no danger at all. But can you stay calm, anyway? Promise not to break anything, at least.”

“I promise,” Shizuo says dismissively, and then his voice takes on a dark edge. (And Shinra reminds himself, _that was too incredibly careless_ , that Shizuo isn’t an idiot.) “This isn’t about the people who –?”

Shinra waits for an explosion, and when there isn’t one, he nods to confirm what Shizuo has already all but accepted. “There’ve been three additional attacks since Izaya’s, one of which resulted in a casualty.”

Shizuo’s breath leaves him ragged, almost gray-faced. “They didn’t find him.”

“Her,” Shinra says flatly. He continues, still shaky, himself, “Celty and I have been following online forums and message boards for solid information on the group who attacked Izaya-kun, and no one seems to be aware of what really caused his recent, ah, disappearance.” Of course, their brief trips out for surgeries _had_ been noticed; mercifully, though, the (surprisingly few) sightings and stories had mostly blended into a dull roar of rumors and falsehoods online.

Because how could anyone believe something like that, even in a city like this? There are things that _can’t_ exist but _do_ , and then there are the things that just… _shouldn’t._

People know by now that something’s wrong, but Izaya shouldn’t be in any danger from old enemies cognizant of the damage’s full extent.

Aloud, Shinra says, “No one knows about what happened to him, but authorities and plenty of civilians noticed some similarities and made a connection between the second two attacks. The story would be big with news outlets and the more general public if there weren’t a concerted effort to cover it up –to avoid creating panic, I’m sure. And the incidents themselves… the locations…” He shakes his head. “I won’t pretend that I wasn’t aware of those two attacks, before, Shizuo-kun, but some things are better left unsaid, and for all that it’s truly terrible, hiding it isn’t hard.”

Shizuo’s hands are rolled into white-knuckled fists, and his voice is as strained as the rest of him. “So why now, then? Couldn’t wait any longer to warn me that they might see Izaya and come for him again?”

“I don’t think that needs to be a major concern,” Shinra says. “Because, listen – the most recent one wasn’t as – as thorough. The victim – an older man, pretty wealthy, too – got away with one eye undamaged, a few broken bones and” – Shizuo looks like he’ll break, himself, if he doesn’t break something else first, so Shinra does him the favor of skipping the rest of the details – “Shizuo-kun, it’s because they were interrupted, and by someone with the strength to scare them off. That was lucky” – _if only Izaya had been_ half _that lucky_ – “but only a few days later, the same man ran across that group again. He saw them, recognized them, was even seen _by_ them –”

“He got away? A second time? They let him go?”

“They ran,” Shinra says, feeling bitter disgust rise in the back of his throat. “They don’t have some grand goal here, Shizuo-kun. My area of expertise may not be law enforcement, but I believe that those people really only did it because they” – the disgust rises, creeps into his voice – “ _enjoyed_ it. They don’t want to be punished, hell, they’re apparently afraid enough of that to run. Especially vicious, good at planning, but – third rate. They aren’t a threat to Izaya-kun, especially not if he’s with you for any stretch of time.”

“And there are witnesses,” Shizuo rasps. “At least, this third guy – and he can see. So…?”

“Yeah,” Shinra confirms. They know what to look for. They have evidence – witnesses, physical proof and clues and traces. Those bastards are messy, maybe enough so that they should have known better – and maybe they did, and maybe they had some goal, maybe they were biding the time, but what difference does it make? The police are more than enough to handle this, and they’re searching – and it will all be over before long, if not for the victims then certainly for the criminals.

Shizuo looks exhausted. Not angry, not anymore. Shinra had almost expected a rain of death threats, streams of muttered curses and a storm of incredulous fury. But Shizuo is quiet, sick-looking.

“Never would’ve,” he starts, but his voice cracks and he has to start over. “Never would’ve thought people like that’d be able to get the flea. Not – any of the people who actually wanted it badly.” It’s nothing the three of them haven’t said before, at various points and times.

“Well,” Shinra sighs. “We don’t know the whole story. It’s possible that they were working for someone, but as unlikely as that is, if it were really the case, I can only imagine that there was a loose association at best.” He props his feet up on an unoccupied cushion, tosses his head back and sighs again. “You’re right.  They aren’t really… I would’ve…”

The third time Shinra sighs, he’s left feeling as weightless as the room is quiet.

Shizuo takes another minute, then finally draws a breath and says, “Was that – is that supposed to be the good news? They’ll get caught? I don’t have to feel some _obligation_ to beat the shit out of them?”

Shinra straightens instantly and fixes Shizuo with a heavy glare. “Regarding that last part – _no,_ for fuck’s sake, don’t even think about it. You don’t need me to tell you why your only obligation ought to be doing whatever you can to keep yourself under control.”

Shizuo twitches. His eyes start to close, but he shakes himself and attempts to meet Shinra’s gaze (not without momentary success, but the discomfort is plain as day even so). “You know I’m no good at… that,” he mutters, voice lowered as if he’s just said some terrible secret aloud.

But. Shinra gets it.

He can only nod, not quite willing to voice an apology instead of the “I think you can manage it” that he actually offers. Lately it’s been a little too easy to forget how Shizuo usually is – and how he probably still feels about that. Always was pretty lacking in self-confidence. Self-love. Self-control.

Shizuo just shrugs, eyes still averted. “So? That’s it?”

Shinra lets himself smile a little. “The good news? That was the first half of it. I said that the third victim was wealthy, didn’t I?”

“Fat lot of good…” Shizuo shifts. “Forget it. Just get the rest of this the fuck over with.”

He’s tempted to tell Shizuo to ask a little more nicely, but at this point he’d really rather not drive the man to add extra ventilation to his and Celty’s apartment – and it’s not like Shinra doesn’t understand, anyway.

“The email I was talking about was from him. Poor guy’s barking up the wrong tree coming to someone like me for help – I have no idea who he talked to,” Shinra adds, shaking his head and trying not to remind himself of any better informants in particular. “He wanted me to surgically implant hearing aids.” In an aside, he clarifies, “That work is pretty delicate, and I’m not that kind of doctor besides.”

He looks pointedly at Shizuo, but the man’s face is a mess of confusion and irritation.

“You said that wouldn’t work for Izaya,” he says flatly.

“I did,” Shinra agrees. “And I wasn’t exactly wrong. But this guy has money, Shizuo-kun, enough that he managed to get his hands on new, untested tech. That’s probably why he’s looking for people like me – someone who won’t have to make some official record. Of course, surgical implants for hearing loss exist already, but they generally aren’t cut out to do what Izaya-kun would need them to do. Without someone like Izaya-kun himself to look into it for me, I can’t say that I’ve been able to learn much about what this tech does or how it works. But.”

Shizuo’s eyes widen. “But this guy was hurt the same way Izaya was? So if he wants to get this whatever-it-is, uh, installed, it’s because it can fix the problem. It could fix Izaya’s…”

Shinra’s smile hadn’t quite managed to disappear yet, and now it widens even more. He’s been holding himself back, but Shizuo looks as interested as he feels, so he just, well, he lets himself talk the excitement out, a little.

“It should be able to repair conduction hearing loss – tympanic membrane and delicate bone structure both. It goes without saying that anything capable of doing that would require some delicate work to be done, and if it really hasn’t been tested yet – of course, it _is_ being developed right here in Ikebukuro, it seems, so it’s entirely possible that some extra work has been done behind-the-scenes – but, right, if it hasn’t, I can think of loads of problems that might arise, and in our position there’s not much choice beyond simply trusting that the developers are at least as smart as I am. There’s also the question of upkeep and permanence, not to mention the difference in sound quality, if there is one. The implants seem to be moderately customizable – for proper fit, of course, and then to preserve slight individual differences. I don’t know if that’s even –”

“Hey. Shinra,” Shizuo says, not even angry. “Slow down.”

Shinra laughs, giddy now in spite of the earlier news. “Celty warned me not to tell you all this until I had something concrete to work with, so of course I’ve already traded info for info. It’s not even quite as much as I’d expected it to be; Izaya-kun can easily afford to cover the operation – just one this time – the implants, everything. I have names, dates, appointments. For the right price, they even agreed to come directly to his apartment to do it.” He leans in close. “I’m no Orihara Izaya, but I’m still better than victim number three at endearing myself as a customer – and using a connection or two. It looks like it’ll all go smoothly.”

Shizuo is already on his feet, moving back in the direction of Izaya’s room. “Sh-Shinra – I – th-thanks. I’m –”

Shinra sinks back into the couch, feeling somehow grounded again, and nods his understanding. “Go slow telling him everything – or as much as you think he can handle for now. It’s a lot to take in.”

Shizuo is gone before Shinra’s finished the unnecessary warning, but that’s fine. Everything’s fine right now – Shizuo, Izaya, maybe –

– maybe, Shinra hopes, they’ll all eventually be some sort of alright again.

Maybe there’s still room enough for dreams.


	29. Chapter 29

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _The apartment itself is full of dust and the quiet buzz of emptiness._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The last time I updated this was almost 5 months ago. And you thought it was on permanent hiatus.

Izaya flinches when Shizuo reaches for his hand, before Shizuo can even make direct contact. He’s gotten still more sensitive to things like that – minute shifts in the air, the tiny tremors of distant footsteps and of doors opening and closing – and a moment passes without motion before Izaya nods to indicate that he’s okay with being touched.

Shizuo realizes belatedly that his own hands are trembling with barely-suppressed excitement, so he rushes to explain himself, his enormous, desperate joy, this new hope. Izaya’s lips move before he can, and there’s something like muted concern in the man’s expression when he asks, _Is something wrong?_

 _No,_ Shizuo writes, pressing too hard, _I have something to tell you,_ and he clarifies, _Something really good_ – because now he thinks he’d like to draw this out a little, tell Izaya in a way and at a moment that is _just so_. Who knows how long it might be before he has news like this again – good news, genuinely merciful to an extent that feels miraculous now?

He can see the way Izaya relaxes by degrees, but only confusion registers on his face.

Shizuo’s chest tightens, thrumming with subdued anger, because the expression doesn’t at all resemble the confusion of someone mulling over possible answers. He can see it, the way Izaya’s stuck at step one: there can’t be any news that good, not for Orihara Izaya, not now. It’s an assumption that can’t be satisfied by whatever long, dark walls have sprouted in his head.

A ringing, unsympathetic silence.

It leaves Shizuo at a loss but entirely bent on doing _something_ – so he runs a hand through Izaya’s too-long hair, tentative and gentle and Izaya only catches his breath and shakes his head, not scared but not quite sure of himself, either. The gesture is intimate but no more out of place than good news in this bedroom-turned-hospital; Shizuo wants it to convey more than he knows how to say in words.

Returning his hand to Izaya’s, he writes, _Shinra found something. Wanna try and guess?_

 _I’d prefer not to get my hopes up,_ Izaya answers with a wry smile.

Shizuo hums his understanding, more to himself than to Izaya, and says, _You can get your hearing back._

Izaya looks like he’s been slapped. His free hand – no tubes or wires, now – goes to his face, hides his eyes. He draws one steady breath and then another, and then he reaches for the pad of paper and pen at his side and writes a note in quick, measured strokes occasionally interrupted by rough, uneven ones – revisions.

Shizuo takes it from Izaya when he’s prompted to do so. The letters, though still tellingly different from what Shizuo would once have expected of Izaya, are easy enough to read: _I thought there was nothing_ , which ends abruptly – the scribbles meant to black it out are positioned just above it, out of the way – and _permanently??_ At the bottom of the paper is a smaller, neater line of text. _If you’re joking, it isn’t funny. Are you_ – crossed out with jagged lines – _is he sure?_

It’s not as much doubt as Shizuo had expected. Hell, he can read hope in some of it, tentative and fearful but present all the same. He sets the paper down beside Izaya and takes his hand.

_Shinra doesn’t know about how permanent it’ll be, but he seemed pretty optimistic. I guess I don’t understand a lot, but there are implants that can replace everything that was damaged. It doesn’t sound like something that’d just stop working out of the blue._

When he starts to bring his hand back again, Izaya stops him in what has become a well-understood sign between them: _continue._ His eyes are squeezed shut, and there’s a determined set to the rest of his face. He’s focusing hard on Shizuo’s words. Clinging.

So Shizuo continues. _It’ll only take a single operation, with some other appointments for prep or something – sorry, I don’t know exactly, ask Shinra,_ he writes, when Izaya opens his eyes to glare at the empty space slightly to Shizuo’s right. _They can do it all in your apartment. We’re moving there,_ he adds, by way of reminder, _the day after tomorrow._

 _I know,_ Izaya mouths, and then he sighs, long and slow and gentle. It’s nothing if not a sound of relief.

 _So,_ Shizuo finishes, awkward now, _yeah, we’re all sure. You… you’re fine with it? Even if you had to let them –_ he corrects himself, tries not to think about ice picks, the unimaginable sensation of – of  – _it wouldn’t remind you too much, would it?_

Izaya’s expression darkens enough that his ensuing smile comes off looking more pained than genuinely happy.

 _No,_ he says, and for a second Shizuo’s stomach lurches – disappointment? vicarious fear? – but Izaya gives his arm a warning tug and repeats, _no_ – but – _I’m not okay with it. I might_ – he stops, tries again – _you’ll have to hold me to it, Shizu-chan._

_Want me to ask Shinra about sedatives? Might help, before. I don’t even know if you have to be awake –_

_It’s fine._

Shizuo’s unanswering hesitation is enough of a question in itself.

 _We’ll make it work,_ Izaya says. _Tell Shinra thanks. I’m –_ his cheeks go faintly pink, and he turns so far away that Shizuo can barely follow the movement of his lips in profile – _it’s like a dream._

**~**

They reach Izaya’s apartment off-schedule, mid- becoming late evening, mostly as a result of the additional time it takes Shizuo to make a side trip back to his own apartment for a final armful of personal belongings. The entire process is fairly cumbersome; although the majority of their trip is made via taxi, Izaya is nevertheless disguised for safety’s sake with a pair of sunglasses, black scarf, and baseball cap. Shizuo is given the unenviable task of toting a large suitcase and several other bags, contents miscellaneous, which lends to his irritable grumbling about pack animals and back injury.

Seeing them off, Shinra grins and says, “You look like a celebrity with his bodyguard.”

Shizuo defaults to glaring back at Shinra before he gives up and laughs only a little reluctantly.

“Guess that’s kinda how it is, huh?”

The apartment itself is full of dust and the quiet buzz of emptiness. Shizuo’s been here recently, largely just to ensure that the replacement keys they’d ordered were in working order – and that the apartment hadn’t been broken into or otherwise messed up in Izaya’s absence – but the place somehow still has the air of something left too long undisturbed. It feels inhospitable and lonely.

Shizuo knows one or two ways to change that. Hopes he does, anyway.

Without moving farther beyond the apartment’s entrance, Izaya draws a deep breath and removes the hat and sunglasses. His hair, recently washed, sticks out at odd angles and is barely short of reaching his shoulders. Shizuo expects him to turn back and say something, maybe offer Shizuo the discarded accessories, but instead he takes a few steps forward, the hat and glasses dangling from one hand, the other tracing first a counter and then a wall, until he reaches a set of two steps leading to an open area with couches and a TV.

Shizuo’s face heats up, and he hurries to follow Izaya.

It’s still waiting on the couch where Shizuo left it a week ago, a suggestion courtesy of Kasuka. Izaya can’t see it, of course, but he finds it the second he crawls over the back of the couch and tries to lie across the cushions.

He sits up in a hurry and looks around anxiously for Shizuo, who moves quickly to his side.

_What – Shizu-chan –_

_It’s a present,_ Shizuo hurries to explain. _I was going to tell you beforehand –_

He stops when Izaya raises his eyebrows. The expression is just visible in the fading light streaming in through the apartment’s ridiculously enormous windows; the momentary fear has passed already, leaving surprise and amusement in its place.

 _A stuffed toy?_ Izaya tosses the hat and glasses – and now the scarf, as well – to the side and raises a hand to Shizuo’s face. The gesture does nothing to diminish the heat of a blush, and the positively teasing look on Izaya’s face is proof enough that it hasn’t gone unnoticed.

When Izaya’s hand falls to his lips, Shizuo sighs and says, “Yeah…”

Izaya makes a peculiar sound that can only be voiceless laughter, then withdraws his hand and finds the enormous stuffed rabbit while Shizuo looks on. Izaya turns his back to Shizuo, so his face is no longer visible, but he does return his hand to Shizuo after a moment; Shizuo accepts it and, whispering as he writes, says, “Sorry, it’s – it’s a little childish.” The back of his neck tingles. “Didn’t know what else to…”

He lets his sentence go unfinished.

Izaya’s taken his hand back again and is busy exploring the rabbit with both hands – one to support its back, the other to stroke its fur, trace the curves of its fat body, its fingerless paws and droopy ears.

Shizuo watches for a while, and Izaya is inexplicably intent on continuing the tactile examination; they must sit like that for 20 minutes at least before Izaya finally draws the stuffed animal to his side and turns with it so that Shizuo can see his face.

He’s smiling, but he says nothing – just nods when Shizuo places a tentative hand on his shoulder and then awkwardly reaches for Shizuo. Finds his chest first, the tremor of Shizuo’s heart, and then slides past that to touch his back.

The hug is uncertain, encumbered by the bulk of the rabbit on one side and almost between them, and they fit together about as well as pieces from different puzzles, but Izaya’s head finally finds the crook of Shizuo’s shoulder, Shizuo’s arm Izaya’s back, their legs a particular position that allows them both to stay upright without any tension, and they sit that way for a while, just drawing measured breaths and absorbing the unlikely warmth.

It’s probably the best _welcome home_ Shizuo’s ever experienced.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I used [this](http://chombox.sdbx.jp/orihara_house/22.jpg#mode=slideshow&zoom=1) as a reference for the layout of Izaya's ritzy apartment.


	30. Chapter 30

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _He's finally starting to feel like he can live this way, too._

He starts to feel like himself slowly, one day at a time.

It takes him hours and hours to memorize the layout of his spacious apartment. The place never felt like home before, because as long as it served whatever practical purposes were relevant at the time, Izaya was satisfied. Now, though, he struggles to amplify the familiarity by leaps and bounds – not only because it allows him to move confidently from one room to another, but also because he needs a safety that belongs to him. Not a headquarters, but a home.

If only he knew what that meant for him – how to reconcile the usual definitions with his current reality and the person he used to be.

Shizuo helps. He keeps a respectful distance, and he’s gotten better at deciphering the signs that indicate when Izaya wants to be alone, with or without words. He cooks well enough for a protozoan, runs errands, and struggles to keep the place adequately clean, at least until Izaya works up the courage to find – with a little help from Shinra – a cleaning service that can come by every few days.

Shizuo fumes about that one for a while, oddly enough.

Actually, as Izaya gradually learns, Shizuo is still great fun to tease – but the teasing isn’t what it used to be, either. There’s no longer a specific goal driving it, no intentional provocation of rage or violence, and it isn’t mean-spirited so much as it’s almost affectionate. Almost the banter of good friends.

It’s just like old times, and it’s nothing like that at all. No version of Izaya, past or present, could have been prepared to slip easily into this daily life. It’s as difficult as it is pleasant, a constant, minor culture shock that he usually doesn’t mind experiencing. In a way he thinks it’s like human observation, which makes it seem a little less alien, if not less disconcertingly personal. But really, it’s a hands-on look at what people feel – not that he didn’t feel before, of course, and plenty of his feelings he would throw away in a second if the opportunity were granted to him – but. But. There are some things he honestly likes. Things no amount of second- and third-person observation could have made clear to him.

(Gratitude and reclaiming all the fragmented pieces of his life – the unexpected strength it makes him feel – and the incredible relief that is truly trusting another person, and the warmth that is Shizuo, and –)

It’s good, doing and feeling and – only sometimes – enjoying, all for himself, not through someone else. No pawns, no puppet-strings, just gradually getting better with whatever and whoever is there in front of him.

Nothing he’s gained was worth what he lost, but he can only move forward in time. He’ll never be the same, and he hates that.

But he’s finally starting to feel like he can live this way, too.

**~**

The first thing he hears is a chorus of humming and buzzing machines. An isolated corner of his mind stumbles over it but still manages to process the din, recognizing likely sources in household appliances and the system keeping his – their – apartment powered and temperature controlled.

The first thing he hears is a voice stringing too many words together for Izaya to follow. He doesn’t know that voice, can’t identify its tone or its owner’s intent.

The first thing he hears is a rapid series of inhalations and exhalations that build with the panic in his chest and the nausea in his gut, his throat, and the deafening splash and drip of – blood? His throat cut open, hot liquid coating it from the inside and out, out –

What he hears next is not so much a scream as it is a choking, rasping wheeze – he feels it leave him and labels himself the source of the shallow, aching breaths, the scattered, whining shards of a broken voice – and then, faintly, the rasp of skin on fabric and a safer kind of warmth – dry, firm, gentle. It rubs slow, quiet circles into the trembling arch of his shoulder, and he nearly bats it away.

“You’re safe,” he hears, and he knows that voice. He tries to dart toward it, but finds that he can’t move enough to do so, and the wracking sobs grow painful – though whether it’s the sound or the physical pain of it, Izaya isn’t sure.

“I know,” Shizuo insists, his words slow and quiet and careful. “I’m not going anywhere.”

_It’s too loud,_ Izaya wants to cry – he works his mouth but what little sound escapes is far from comprehensible – and he’s bleeding, he’s sure of it, from his neck and his ears and –

“You puked,” Shizuo comments, bluntly, and a cloth rustles too loudly by Izaya’s face. “Here…”

Izaya flinches – _the cut you’ll get it in the cut you can’t stop the blood with that –_ only to still the moment the light touch of a damp rag brings back all the feeling he’s supposed to have in his throat, on his face, by his mouth. With a shudder, he swallows once, twice, and then does his best to match Shizuo’s breathing when he’s asked to – unsuccessfully at first, but gradually he manages to achieve something close to calm, recognizes that the stranger’s voice from earlier must have been the doctor who came to do this, finds that all the background sounds slowly settle into a uniform din that Izaya can _just_ manage to ignore.

The doctor has more questions and minor tests to run through, then. Shizuo doggedly keeps Izaya on track in spite of his increasingly strong desire to put an end to the whole scene. He’s exhausted, for one thing, and mortified for another. Dispirited, maybe, because he hates days and moments like this, because they feel like the opposite of progress, and he hates being seen like that – regardless of how positive everyone else seems to be that this, too, is to be expected, is okay, is not something to feel ashamed of.

He’s never been so immensely relieved to hear the sound of a door clicking shut.

Shizuo’s approaching footsteps come as a relief, too. Izaya has to focus on the soft reverberations through the floor to reassure himself that Shizuo is the one approaching, but he’s sure it won’t be long before he also memorizes that rhythm, the weight of it, the particular pitch of Shizuo breathing.

“You okay?” Shizuo asks, and Izaya uses the back of his hand to conceal a tiny smile, because Shizuo is definitely still making an effort to speak slowly and lower his voice. He’s trying not to be obvious, but the effort is still apparent. _It’s not like him_ , he thinks. It’s just like him.

Izaya nods and pats the couch cushions beside him. He hears a long exhalation from Shizuo that isn’t quite a sigh and decides that it must accompany a smile, maybe a swell of relief – he hopes so.

The couch dips, and Shizuo presses a glass of water into Izaya’s hand; he must have had more than one of them sitting by all this time, just in case. It’s a welcome gesture, and Izaya accepts it with another nod before taking a sip. He can feel Shizuo watching him closely, probably wondering when he’ll offer some comment, so he waits just another moment before he passes the glass back to Shizuo. His pen and paper are right where he’d left them earlier, maybe as a precaution but mostly for exactly this sort of moment.

_It’ll take some getting used to,_ he admits as soon as he has the instruments in his hand.

He tips the paper toward Shizuo, who makes a noise somewhere between a thoughtful hum and a grunt.

_Your voice sounds funny,_ Izaya adds, unimpressed by the lackluster response.

Shizuo clears his throat. “Shut up,” but he hardly seems angry – which is exactly what’s strange, after all.

_Why so quiet? Could it be that Shizu-chan is feeling shy?_

Yes, if the sudden hitch in Shizuo’s breath is any indication.

“Shut up,” Shizuo repeats, and now Izaya’s able to read _flustered_ in the tone and tremor of his voice. “It’s – sometimes it’s easier to talk when it isn’t out loud. But I’m, uh, it’s good that you can just listen. Right?”

Izaya’s smile grows into a genuine grin as he hurriedly writes – to the tune of the fine-tipped scratch of pen on paper – _Aw, so you preferred my hands on your lips? That isn’t very sanitary, you know._ What he really means is _yes,_ and _thank you,_ and _it’s a huge relief,_ but he lets a joke stand in for the sappier lines, this time.

The time it takes him to realize his mistake is almost embarrassingly long; by the time he does, Shizuo is already spluttering and stammering his way through a denial, and Izaya can just about feel the heat radiating off of him. Just as Izaya turns to grab Shizuo’s sleeve, the blonde rockets to his feet and takes a few noisy steps back from the couch. In another of those awkward instances that leave Izaya feeling like a less adept Celty, he hurriedly scratches out a messy – but hopefully still legible – _Wait_ , which he then holds up for Shizuo to see, assuming he’s even looking.

He’s not, or at least he doesn’t seem to be, because there’s no response save for an uneven sigh. Izaya frowns and gets up to follow Shizuo wherever he might try to run off to.

Then there’s a sudden rustling of clothes as Shizuo looks up and immediately takes another step back – only to trip on the coffee table, the damn idiot – and for the first time ever, Izaya has the satisfaction of offering Shizuo a hand up, rather than the other way around. Luckily, there’s no sound to suggest splintering wood or shattered glass. The table is durable enough to withstand Shizuo’s weight; the only damage is to Shizuo’s pride as well as his composure, but he accepts Izaya’s hand all the same.

(He doesn’t need it and doesn’t put more than a tiny fraction of his weight on Izaya, but that’s probably for the best, rehab and recovery aside.)

“S-sorry,” Shizuo mutters. “That was – yeah, I overreacted.”

He could laugh at that, he really could, but instead Izaya just raises an eyebrow in Shizuo’s general direction.

“That wasn’t it,” Shizuo rushes to explain. “You… were joking,” he realizes, belatedly, and Izaya nods. “I – okay, but that really wasn’t what I thought about it. You know that…?”

Izaya’s laughter is cautious and almost silent, but it’s genuine, and he releases Shizuo’s hand only to write a response on paper. _We’ve been over this already._

“Yeah…”

Izaya hesitates only for a moment, standing as he is at the peak of an emotional high. He can _hear._ He can laugh, smile, even have exchanges like this. The scene from earlier has all but faded from his mind. He bows his head over the notepad, hoping he manages to obscure it from Shizuo’s view, and then straightens back up and nudges at Shizuo’s chest to ensure that he has his attention.

_Answer one question honestly, Shizu-chan._

There’s a brief pause as Shizuo reads the first page of Izaya’s notepad, and then a nervous, “Yeah.”

Izaya’s stomach flutters as he flips to the second page and shows the paper to Shizuo again.

It reads, _Can I kiss you?_

And, well, Izaya understands what Shizuo meant earlier; some things really are easier written than said.


	31. Chapter 31

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _The outlook is optimistic, not just for Izaya’s body but for the rest of him, as well._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A very short chapter as a precursor to Plot Things - bear with me! The Plot Things chapter is already about 52% written.

Loving and being loved by Shizuo won’t fix Izaya, Shizuo’s sure of that, and that’s assuming – optimistically, to Shizuo’s thinking – that he actually does feel anything as strong as love. That’s assuming that it isn’t just a simple passing fancy, a moment of elation that spilled over into something else.

 

_“Yes,” he answers, too quickly, because of course he wouldn’t mind – but – “Are you sure?”_

_Izaya manages to look Shizuo dead in the eyes when he glares at him, frustrated._ Of course I’m sure, _he mouths._ I’m the one asking.

_Shizuo bows his head, rubs nervously at the back of his neck and then says, “Okay.”_

 

Izaya hasn’t said anything about it in the days since then, nor has he endeavored to elaborate on his own thoughts about Shizuo – and he certainly hasn’t gone as far as initiating any more contact between them, at least not anything physical. Shizuo figures Izaya’s hit some kind of personal limit, something he can’t safely exceed, just yet, and though the whole situation leaves him a little uncertain about where they stand, he doesn’t hold it against Izaya.

That, and he makes sure to maintain whatever distance Izaya seems to want and need the most, just like he has all along. That level of respect has never been a challenge and it isn’t now, either, but all the same Shizuo pays special attention to the way he carries himself around his roommate. The last thing he wants to do is upset him.

 

_Izaya’s hands fall on Shizuo’s shoulders, light as a feather until he tightens his grip to lean in. His eyes are closed –_ because that’s how it’s supposed to be, in movies and stuff, _Shizuo thinks – and he seems to know what he’s doing, at least until his lips miss Shizuo’s by a narrow margin, so that the kiss becomes a chaste peck on the cheek._

_Shizuo wonders if, maybe, that’s all Izaya really meant; he’s just starting to think that maybe, just maybe, he’s as empty-headed as Izaya himself used to say – for getting all worked up by himself – when Izaya makes a tiny sound of displeasure and, without breaking his hold, tugs Shizuo closer._

 

He thinks about it a lot, though. The way it felt, the way Izaya looked and the little bounce in his step that had lingered through the rest of the day; he’d been more outwardly happy about the kiss than Shizuo, even, but at least some of that must’ve also been because of his ears. They’re fine now, too, and it’s been days. The outlook is optimistic, not just for Izaya’s body but for the rest of him, as well – that is, at least as far as Shizuo can tell.

 

_Shizuo is startled by the closeness of another’s breath gusting across his face. He worries that Izaya will be more than startled, but the man doesn’t flinch away or tense up – nothing. And then their lips are touching, clumsily, and Shizuo knows what to do about as well as Izaya does._

_It’s nothing groundbreaking, nothing all that incredible, really, but there’s a happy flutter in Shizuo’s chest all the same. It doesn’t matter that they just stand there, lips touching and nothing else, only to break away moments later, putting an unsynchronized, all too abrupt end to the thing. It doesn’t matter that they probably look like fools, or else like a couple of inexperienced teenagers. Prior experience and theatrical appeal don’t matter._

_Izaya’s hand finds its way to his own chest. Whatever he feels there puts another smile on his face._

 

Maybe Shizuo’s getting ahead of himself, but he’s starting to feel like they have no truly big concerns left to worry about.


End file.
